


Mine

by areyoureddiekids



Category: Orange is the New Black
Genre: Black Reader, F/F, Past Rape/Non-con, There's Murder, carol is a prison mommy pass it on, i am gay, i mean dAMN, i'm just super into present day carol okay, porn with a plot bc i love plots and character development fuckin sue me, the word fuck is used a lot in this, those glasses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-05
Updated: 2018-08-30
Packaged: 2019-06-22 08:32:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 24
Words: 48,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15577899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/areyoureddiekids/pseuds/areyoureddiekids
Summary: You know she watches you.You’ve been aware of it since two weeks after you first got here, two months ago. You had been terrified, of course. Still are, really. The girls who knew what you did to get sent to a Maximum-Security prison made fun of you; insisting someone else must have done your crime. You were too quiet – too withdrawn and glaring and silent to have killed two men in cold blood; ripping out their insides and splaying them around them like Christmas decorations.-In which Carol takes an interest in you, and you're totally crushing on the nut-case Little Debber murderer.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> okay so i’ve been sucked into the carol denning vortex after oitnb. i will write for young!carol, but old carol does things to me and i don’t know why??? my bi ass is gone and is her slave forever. hope you guys like. follow me on my tumblr caroldenningimagine. i need validation

You know she watches you.

You’ve been aware of it since two weeks after you first got here, two months ago. You had been terrified, of course. Still are, really. The girls who knew what you did to get sent to a Maximum-Security prison made fun of you; insisting someone else must have done your crime. You were too quiet – too withdrawn and glaring and silent to have killed two men in cold blood; ripping out their insides and splaying them around them like Christmas decorations.

They raped your little sister. What else could you have done? Still, you were going to be in Litchfield for a very, very long time.

Mysteriously, just three days ago, most of the jeers you received from some of the more stupid and aggressive women had stopped. Your bunk-mate, a fifty-something woman in for slicing her husbands throat for ear to ear and running off with her baby twenty years ago, was grateful for this. She was guilty by association with you.

You wondered, at first, why these women would do this. You didn’t complain, and your dorm-mate, Larsen, told you to shut up and just take the good things when they come. She was quick tempered, but equally as quiet as you. She had a few people who she spoke to, but mostly kept to herself and her copious drawings that she did. You never would dream of telling her, but she was pretty shit.

Larsen was quiet, like you, and like you she didn’t mingle with the bitches of C-Block, the ones you had to watch out for who ran the drug game and protected the big bad number one: Carol. She was the one who watched you.

You ignored it, like you did everything else.

Your days were mundane, spent reading, staring at the ceiling, or playing card games with inmates whose names you hardly remembered. They were mostly friends of Larsen, and sometimes you laughed. Sometimes you cracked a few wry jokes and made them laugh. You were good at that. At making me laugh with your dry humour. You were normal, you knew. So were a lot of the women in here. Everyone in the world was just one bad decision away from being locked up, just like you, just like these women.

The first time you catch her eye, it’s during meal time.

You’re sitting with Larsen and three of her friends. Most of them are Larsen’s age, but one is a short-haired girl in her twenties, like you, with big green eyes and scars along her mouth. She cracks jokes at every chance she gets, and you know she’s been here for a long time. She’s one of the ones who is still trying to keep a smile on their face. You applaud her for that.

She tells a joke, and for the first time since being here you give a proper laugh. It comes from your belly, and you must cover up your mouth as you snort, almost relieved to feel the happiness that came with laughter. For two months, you had felt only overwhelming guilt for the stress you had caused your family. Around you, the other ladies laugh, and you look, only briefly, to you left, still smile and still covering your mouth.

You see her looking.

You’ve known that she’s looked before. You’re not unused to the attention of women, young and old. You’re bi, with a mess of black curls that catch your fingers when you run your hands through it, a spattering of freckles, a slight gap tooth, and a height that makes you look like a fucking Cabbage Patch Kid. It was no wonder the women in here had snorted when they heard your crime. You were not scary at all.

Right now, there is no shame in her stare. Perhaps, if you had caught it before, you would have seen this. You had never wanted to, though. If Carol was paying attention to anyone, that was usually attention that you didn’t want. She was scary. Larsen had warned you that much, in hushed whispers when it was doors closed.

She looks at you from her table, at the other end of the Mess Hall, past those two big glasses that are oddly endearing, and surrounded by the closest of the gang. You stall in your laughter and blink, noting in the split few seconds before you look away that she tilts her head, her brow twitching only slightly.

You blink away, your neck clicking you turn so quickly, and your stomach twisting with heat and nerves.

You realise, just seconds later, that you’re fucking blushing.

-

The second time you catch her looking, it’s when the CO’s are patting inmates down in the recreational area outside your cells. An inmate in D-Block went for a C-Block girl outside (the stupid fucking war, courtesy of the Denning sisters) with a shiv, and so the whole of Max is being searched. You wince when C.O Hellman reaches round, patting you down, and his fingers inch toward the bit of skin where your thigh meets your groin. You stare ahead, jaw clenched, and think of how fucking much you hate men like him; the ones who abuse their power over the women of Max.

It is at that moment, as your eyes flicker and cheeks redden with shame when you meet Hellman’s dark, amused glare and his fingers tickle over your behind, his chest close to yours, that you look over his shoulder and see her staring.

She has obviously finished being checked by the CO’s. She stands facing the wall, her hands pressed against the cement, and her head turned toward you and Hellman. Beneath your stiff, unpleasant clothes, you suddenly feel hot all over. As CO’s call across the area and search bunks, you meet Carol’s gaze and hold it for as long as you dare.

You suddenly feel fucking terrified.

She looks furious. She was one of those people that wanted others to know when they were pissed off, and right now her jaw was tight, her nostrils were flaring, and the lightly wrinkled skin of her forehead with scrunched with wrath. Fuck, you think. What the fuck did I do to make an enemy of her? You look away quickly, nodding and stepping aside when Hellman barks for you to get back to your cell, and that you were clean.

You move quickly, not meeting Carols’ gaze, and making a noncommittal sound when Larsen grumbles, whilst making her bed, ‘Damn assholes cop a damn feel whenever they can. My tits started hittin’ the ground the moment I had Astin. The fuck Hellman wanna be feelin’ them for?’ You scoff, before going to make your own bed.

Whatever the fuck you had done to piss Carol Denning off, it was better to just steer clear of her.


	2. Chapter 2

Your sister is fifteen now. It was her birthday today, and she and your parents had travelled all those miles to come and see you. You had cried, your fingertips pressed against the glass and your cheeks wet with tears. Your sister, with her hair blonde and straight and so different from your, cries and laughs and tells you to stop crying.

You forced her to stop being guilty about what you did, but you knew she still felt awful.

She tells you what your parents got her, and how she was doing at school. You look to your parents, who always eye you with such sadness when they visit. You know they detest what you did, and don’t understand how you could take such violent revenge, but you know your mom doesn’t blame you. She understands, to an extent, she just wishes more than anything you had taken the higher road.

She was going to therapy. So was your little sister. Lily.

‘Rianne,’ your mother had said, and yeah, that’s your name. Your father and sister had started to walk away, and your press the phone closer to your ear and look through the glass. Your mother smiles, wipes at her eyes, and says, ‘We love you. So, so much’.

You nod, but do not say it back. The guilt is too much. Instead you wave her goodbye and stand from your seat, marching quickly past the staring woman sitting two sits along from you. She was one of the C-Block Bitches, as you liked to call them, with olive skin and curly hair and serious anger issues. You throw her a narrowed-eye look, tired of being fucking judges for showing some damn emotion, and walk stiffly past the CO.

That night, when you go back to your cell after whatever constituted as dinner that evening, you find a smaller packet of crinkled tissues sitting on top of your pillow. You stare for just a moment, and Larsen shrugs from the top bunk, her crinkled book in hand. ‘Badison,’ she says, cocking an unplucked brow. ‘You mentioned Carol was throwin’ ya dirty look the other day? You’d better lay low, Jones. Could be a warnin’ or some shit’.

You approach the packet, noting with a sinking feeling the red lollipop slipped inside the packet of tissues.

-

You are on your toes the next day.

You watch anyone who walks too close to you. You keep can eye out for Carol, or any of her posse, as you do the job you had been assigned and sweep for a few hours. It makes your back ache, but at least you hadn’t been assigned toilet duty. That was some nasty shit.

The lollipop sits in your pocket.

You had flushed the tissues down the toilet, worried that they were drenched in some fucking killing agent – you never know, right? Too many bitches had been killed in some fucked up ways in Max. You keep the lollipop, though. Both you and Larsen had inspected it and found that the packaging was still tightly wrapped around the stick.

You pat your pocket every so often, checking that it’s still there.

It is when you’re standing outside in the cool summer air, decked out in the short sleeved and pale shirt with your face and arms basking in whatever sun reaches through the grating, that you wonder what will happen if you eat the lollipop. Will it answer some odd message she was trying to send you?

Why the fuck was she trying to send any messages?

You’re standing against the wall, having assured Larsen that you were tired as she hung around with only one of her friends a few feet away. You blink up at what little of the sun you can see, your arms crossed over your chest and your feet planted against the ground. You were going to look like a fucking ghost by the time you got out of here, with the amount of sun you were getting.

You see Carol, then, the other side of the yard and surrounded by a few of the older ladies. Her hands are in her pockets, and she stands wit her hair flipped over her shoulder in a style you were sure must have been all the rage when she first got put away, but still oddly suited her. Her glasses catch the sunlight, and you look away before she can see you looking and pay any more attention to you.

Fuck it, you think.

You reach into the pocket of your trousers, unwrap the crinkly wrapping, wipe away the stickiness of the obviously out of date candy, and pop it into your mouth before you lose your courage. The flavour is beautiful. Strawberry and sweet and sugary, and you suck it idly as you look down at the floor. God, you missed taste. You parents put as much in your commissary as they could, but you didn’t like to waste it on sweets. Sanitary products, a radio, comfort – those were more important. But this…fuck, this made you wonder how you had gotten so used to prison slop.

Plus, you weren’t dead. Not poisoned, then.

You look up, one arm folded across your stomach and the other holding the candy to your mouth, and your gaze finds Carol staring at you, her expression blank, and her eyes trained solely on the lollipop pressed against your lips as you pop it out of your mouth.

Your knees turn to jelly.

You wonder, just for a moment, what the fuck is happening. You’d had your fair share of hungry stares and gross advances in here, and you’d almost taken a few, but this…you could not possibly have attracted the attention of her. Still, she stares.

You see the women she stands with seem nonplussed at her lack of attention to their conversation, and don’t follow her stare. Perhaps they knew better. You blink, breathe in deeply and pray you don’t look like a fucking idiot, and pop the lollipop right back into your mouth, suck until your cheeks hollow, and then pull it straight back out again, your tongue following to give a quick lick.

You feel both stupid and horribly flustered when her gaze flicks to yours past those over-sized glasses, and the older woman shows you the first sign that she saw you within those stares. The right side of her mouth picks up into a quick, barely noticeable smirk, before she looks away as if nothing had happened.

You blush to your fucking roots, ignore the lude comment from a woman standing nearby, and crack your teeth against the hard candy to get rid of it as quickly as you can. Perhaps, then, you can pretend the ordeal had never happened.

That night, as you lay your head on your pillow and tuck your hand underneath it, you find three more lollipops. All of them, you see, are strawberry flavoured.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> part 3333333. i love a little bit of slow burn. i’m pretty much just writing this for me at this point lmao. FOLLOW MY TUMBLR AND SEND ME REQUESTS - CAROLDENNINGIMAGINES.TUMBLR.COM.

It’s three days before you make contact with her again. Well, contact is a strong word. So far, all you’ve done is suck off a lollipop and awkwardly catch her staring. You have one lollipop for each of those days, tucked away in your cell and on your bunk where no one (she) can see you. You do your jobs, think about the time you have here, and stay far away from any of the C-Block Bitches. Not that they say anything to you anymore.

It’s odd.

You manage to pluck your eyebrows, thanks to swapping three tampons for an eyebrow threading from some girl, who uses cotton thread from her pillow case. It’s well fucking spent, and you feel far fucking fresher when you step away from her and rub your red skin.

Worth it.

You shower later that afternoon, ready to use the new anti-frizz shampoo you had bought from the Commissary that morning. You wander off alone and slip into the line, back against the wall and fingers tapping against your thigh as you wait. The queue grows behind you, and you dread how busy the showers were going to be.

Gross.

You step forward and around the corner and note that you’re just five people from the front. The CO, the big red haired one, stands near the entrance to the showers, a bored expression on her face as she waves people forward.

‘Slip in here,’ a voice mutters, low and drawling. ‘Ginge is over there – bitch will crack down on me again if she sees me cutting line’.

You frown, thankful that whoever it was had not cut in front of you. There is a murmur of agreement from whoever stands with this person, and as you stare ahead you wonder who it could be for no one else to bat an eye at someone cutting. Such a thing, you knew, was usually work a quick beating.

Oh, you think, realisation dawning.

You turn ever-so-slightly, noting the warmth lingering on your back and the taller form standing just behind you. You look only slightly over your shoulder, noting with one quick glance that it was Carol, turned just a little away from you to talk to the woman she stood with, her arms crossed, and her hair quaffed.

You turn away and wonder why your luck was so shit.

She murmurs to her friend, and you don’t bother listening to what they were saying. If you were caught listening too hard, your ear would be fucking cut off or something. So, you wait, and one by one people file into the showers, and one by one women with damp hair exit.

‘-She’s a fucking liability. Cut her off-’ Carol mutters, and you squeeze your eyes shut when you hear her turn, and her voice wavers off. Her shoes squeak against the floor, and with her warmth against your back, you realise that she is facing you. ‘Do it,’ she says, and there is a small pause. ‘Now’.

You stare head. Just one more person in front of you. There is the tell-tale sign of her friend (Jesus, did this woman have friends) leaving, and you realise that she is alone. Standing right behind you. All tall and terrifying and so fucking close. You try and keep your breaths calm, knowing that a woman like her would notice such a thing. You feel her move, and the warmth against your back grows stronger.

She had moved closer.

The noise seems to fade behind the thrumming of your blood in your ears, and you wonder if she was looking at you. You wonder if her arms were crossed. You wonder is she would shower in the stall next to you-

You feel it, then. I slight pressure against your right thigh, just where your pocket is. She does not make the movement quick or unnoticeable; Carol spiders her fingers across your upper thigh, until they slip into your pocket, and her chest brushes so slightly against your back.

You’re boiling all over and surely, she can’t have missed the way your breath hitches.

You feel her move back, and when your fingers press against your pocket as you move forward in the line, you feel the crinkled paper and the roundness.

She’s gifted you another lollipop.

You move quickly when it is your turn, turning only once when you are about to go around the corner toward a free shower. She stands, her eyes trained on me, and tugs her lips into that odd little smirk, that is far from friendly or inviting.

You look away, shed my clothes on the bench around the corner, and drag both yourself and your towel into the shower stall. You don’t see where she goes, and you are half convinced she had not gone for a shower at all.

When you suck your lollipop that evening, you are sitting in the area outside of your cells with a book in front of you and your legs crossed beneath the table. You had decided that the sweets were not a threat, and so you would show your appreciation. It as the best thing to do with people like Carol.

The next morning, you are told you are relocating cells. Larsen bids you farewell with a cocked brow and a, ‘Makin’ friends I don’t know about, Jones?’ before laughing at your baffled look. Hellman shoves you into your new cell, which you share with a woman with shoulder length greying blonde hair, yellowing teeth and a knack for tidiness, before said woman cracks you a quick grin.

‘Best behaviour, Curly,’ she shoots your way, grinning a little wider as she moves aside, allowing you to take the bottom bunk that was so obviously hers. You frown.

‘Isn’t that your bunk?’ You cock a brow.

She shrugs. ‘Yours now, Curly. Best behaviour in this cell. We got neighbours in high places’. She throws you a meaningful look, cackles, and then leaves the cell with a wiggle of her fingers and her hands buried in her pocket.

It doesn’t take you long to realise who your new neighbour is.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i’ve been saving these for a few days, that’s why i’m posting so much lmao. please follow my tumblr, caroldenningimagines!

Your new bunk-mate never talks to you.

She’s clean, cleaner than Larsen, and uses the toilet sparingly during the night. She’s oddly fucking nice to you, considering you know she’s been a guest at Litchfield for a long, long fucking time. Well nice is a strong word. No one in here is nice. She steers clear of you, doesn’t take your shit, steps aside when you enter your shared cell, and gifts you a simple nod whenever you see her.

The lollipops keep coming. All of them strawberry.

It’s four days since your relocation into your new cell, and you’re still wondering why the fuck Carol had taken an interest in you. Was she trying to recruit you? If so, what the fuck did she think you could offer? Sure, you’d sliced and diced those men, but they had fucking deserved it. You don’t know if you could quell up that type of anger again; the kind that would make you do something like that.

It’s on the fourth day that you realise she hasn’t looked at you. She hasn’t caught your gaze. She hasn’t stood oddly close to you. The lollipops still come, sure, but it’s like she’s ignoring you. It’s fucking stupid that you care, you know. You should be thankful her attention was elsewhere, despite the small candy gifts that appear underneath your pillow every night.

But you care. You miss those cold eyes on you every day.

That night, as you sit on the edge of your bed in your uncomfortable clothes and your scratchy socks, you watch your bunk-mate, whose name was Johnson, clambers up onto her bunk that as much grace as a drunk toddler. You eye her, until she finally stops her clambering and glares down at you.

‘Something on my face, Curly?’ she drawls, her voice rough and her teeth yellowing and, God, would you look like that by the end of your sentence?

You blink at her, unnerved by her violent tone. ‘Why was I moved to this cell?’ You ask it in as calm of a tone as you can; not giving anything away.

She doesn’t answer you, but merely snorts and rolls her eyes and plops onto the top bunk. You pause, shrug, and crawl beneath your covers with your cheek pressed against the thin pillow and your legs curled. After a moment of Johnson shifting noisily on the top bunk, she replies, ‘Ain’t my place to say, Curls, but you best be showin’ your gratitude’.

You shift. ‘Maybe if I knew who to show my gratitude to-’

Johnson snorts. ‘You know. You ain’t one of the stupid ones, Curls’.

-

You want her to look at you.

It’s like a fucking obsession. You want that cold, light eyes and that thin, angry mouth and that thick styled hair to be facing in your direction, and you don’t know why. You find yourself watching her, at meal times the next day and at break time. You stand alone, away from your usual crowd, and decide that you need to find someone in here to fuck you, because you’re obsessing over a fucking nut-case who’s been stuck in here since the 80’s.

Her attention had been short and sweet, and you realise you had fucking loved it.

You’re standing in the shitty yard with your back against the wall and you eyes up at the sun when Badison approaches you. She’s got that smirk on her face and her cheek is bruised from some fight, and she swaggers up to you with her eyes wide and her words already coming out.

‘Y’alright there, Curly?’ She inquires, chewing on some imaginary gum. She stands in front of you and tugs at one of your wild curls, grinning even more when you lean back and scowl at her. ‘Jeez, cheer the fuck up, huh? I gotta ask ya somethin’, that alright?’

You knew Badison from the jeers she used to send you, and the way she would trip you up whenever she could. Now, though, there was nothing malicious in her actions. There hadn’t been for a while. You sigh, cross your arms, and cock a brow. ‘What do you want?’

She clicks her tongue and continues to grin. ‘Ooh! Ya wound me, Curls. See, I was just gonna ask somethin’ about that girl you would hang around with. The dyke with the short hair and the jokes?’ You know who she means. The funny girl who hung around with Larsen sometimes. You nod, to which Badison grins. ‘Uh huh. See, my boss is hearin’ that Funny Girl has some contacts on the outside, you know anythin’ about this?’

You do. The girl, whose name you did not know, had mentioned only briefly how she could run a fucking drug run in here if she wanted. Larsen had shushed her, insisting that if word got out about that, she would have inmates fuckin’ hounding her.

You lean back against the wall. ‘She mentioned it. Once. Who’s asking, Badison?’

She grins, toothy. ‘I think you know, Curls. See…we been hearin’ that Funny Girl has been sellin’ to the D-Block bitches. Ya wouldn’t know anythin’ about that, would ya?’ She stares, hard, and you stare right back.

You straighten up, your gaze narrowed, and your head tilted. ‘If Carol wants to ask me shit, Madison, Carol can ask me. I don’t know shit. I’m not fucking stupid enough to turn against C-Block. Go and tell your fucking boss that’.

It at that moment, when Badison grins all the wider, that you realise you’re a fucking idiot. ‘Well, Curls,’ she drawls, uncrossing her arms and leaning in close to you. ‘Maybe I’ll do just that. Thanks for the chat’. She gives you one last wink, before turning on her heel and swaggering through the C and D Block women, and it is only then that you see where she had come from in the first place.

There, in the middle of the yard, stood your bunk-mate, with her usual lot of older women. With her hands tucked into the pockets of her coat and her hair piled around her shoulders, nodding to whatever Badison was telling her, was Carol.

Your stomach drops.

When Badison finishes talking, Carol’s gaze flicks to you, and the smirk on her face could scare a Great White fucking Shark.

You are, you decide, fucked.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> slight nsfw. follow my tumblr, caroldenningimagines!

It’s an hour until doors closed that your bunk-mate wanders back into your shared cell. You had spent the remainder of the day curled into your shitty little bed, ignoring the CO’s who past your cell and insisted just lying there wasn’t good for you (fucking idiots), and daydreaming about the taste of beer and the feel of the wind on your cheeks.

You were twenty-five years old, had a college education…you were the fucking example that people like you ended up in prison, too. Everyone was just one bad day away from fucking up their lives.

You’d finished your lollipop, sucking on the sweet flavour and wondering just how much all this sugar was fucking up your teeth. You tongue still tasted of the cheap sugary candy, and your fingertips were still sticky from unwrapping the crinkly wrapping paper.

It is with a sigh, your mind on days at the beach and the feel of someone other than a CO touching you, that you roll onto your back. You freeze when you see someone standing in the doorway, only their torso visible to you, and sigh when they go around the bunk, crouch next to your bed, and grin a yellow-toothed grin.

Johnson.

She raises a brow, sneaky and creepy and, God, this woman made your fucking skin crawl. She licks her lips and says, ‘We’ve got a visitor’.

You sit up, ask her what the fuck she was going on about, and swing your legs over the edge of the bunk. It is then that you see another figure enter your cell, this one thinner and taller and walking with a more confident walk. You freeze when Carol fucking Denning pauses beside your bunk-mate, before turning to her and jutting her chin in the direction of the door.

You swallow and watch your bunk-mate throw you a look, before leaving.

Carol continues to stare at you, her jaw cocked and her glasses taking up nearly half her face. She tilts her head, like a cold-blooded lizard, and stands in your cell like it wasn’t against the fucking rules. You, in return, sit with your knees pressed together and your blank expression pointing up at her.

You were really starting to regret your words to Badison.

Carol licks her lips quickly, like a snake sticking out its tongue, before she takes one step toward you. From the outside, you hear the talking of inmates, but no one comes to tell Carol to leave. You know that the CO’s let her get away with shit, and you can’t do anything to get her to leave.

Do you want her to?

‘See, when I do people favours, I expect gratitude,’ she drawls, her jaw tight and her eyes trained on you. Her sneakers scuff against the floor as she takes another step toward the bunk. You stiffen at her words. ‘You, Jones, you haven’t said thank you. Not once’.

You stare up at her, knowing that your hard stare would only amuse the terrifying woman. ‘Thank you, Carol’.

Her smirk grows sharply, before she is ducking into a crouch and her thin hand is darting toward your chin, grabbing you tightly there. You don’t try and fight her, despite the momentary horror that goes through you. Your fingers curls against the mattress and you meet her gaze, your jaw bones tightening under her hold.

She studies your face, her smirk not a smirk at all, but a fucked-up smile of predator to prey. ‘Badison told me you don’t know anything about that laughing girl, huh?’ She tilts her chin up at the last word, her fingernails digging in tighter to your chin. ‘You tellin’ the truth there, Jones?’ Of course, she knew your name.

You grit out your next words. ‘I wouldn’t lie, Carol’.

She quirks her mouth into the smirk again, her brow raises and her eyes flashing across your features. ‘No,’ she muses. ‘Good girls like you don’t lie, do they? How about you open that good little mouth of yours, hm?’

You pause, before doing as told, your mouth opening just slightly. She snatches forward yet again, and you try and jolt away when her index and thumb fingers grab at the tip of your tongue. ‘Red,’ she drawls, leaning in only slightly. ‘You’ve been liking my treats, Jones?’ You nod, and she drops her grip on your tongue with a cruel, satisfied smile. It is when she reaches to her own mouth, her other hand still on your jaw, and licked the two fingers that you blink so hard you’re sure you might pass out. Her gaze meets yours. ‘I do like strawberry’.

You exhale heavily, and she stands and leaves without another glance your way. You breathe how heavily, your nerves on fire and your knees numb. Your cheeks, you realise, are so warm that you’re sure Carol would have seen the way you blushed.

That night, you try your damn hardest to not touch yourself and think of cold blue eyes and hard fingers.

The next morning, a body bag is dragged from C-Block.

-

You find yourself wanting.

You ache every night and find no release. You know some women can rub one out just about anywhere, but you are not one of those women. Especially with Johnson breathing so damn heavily from the bunk above yours. You dream of random bodies pressed up against yours and wake up with your thighs pressed close together and your whole body flushed.

Carol’s staring starts again, and you meet her stares for a few seconds each time, refusing to appear weak to her. Larsen drifts away from you, and you wonder if it is because you have caught the White Shark’s attention; something of which she wants nothing to do with. Either way, you find yourself alone.

You know that Funny Girl, as you had followed Badison’s naming for the unnamed woman, had been killed for her association with Barb, Carol’s equally unhinged sister. You think the girl stupid for even trying to sneak past Carol.

Not many are successful in that.

It is when you’re walking down the corridor after your shower, that you note a closet door to your left is slightly ajar. You stop, your shoes squeaking, and turn to look behind you. Just around the bend of the corridor, you could see the ginger CO who constantly threw life quotes at you waving women into the showers. Shit like this…it was something to careful about, a trap-

It is at that moment that the door opens wider, and you have only a second to see who stands on the other side before you’re being yanked into the closet, you head banging against a bucket and your feet twisting awkwardly.

You go to yell, but a hand covers your mouth and hot breath ghosts you face. You blink at Carol as she plants her free arm across your throat and plants on foot over one of yours, before she is sneering in your face and her nose is nearly brushing yours.

‘People are noticing your fucking staring, Jones,’ she mutters, looking wildly over your face. You struggle to breath against her hand and arm, your feet kicking out to disarm her. ‘Stay fucking still. Now, you gonna stop lookin’ at me with those wide brown eyes, you-’

You lick her hand, to which she snatches it away and throws you a withering look. You, in return, stare up at her and spit out your words, ‘You fucking started it, Carol’.

She sneers at the words, and you choke when her arm presses harder against your throat, and your fingers come up to grasp desperately at the offending limb. ‘You know what happens to people who show me that kind of fucking lip, Jones-?’ You struggle against her, and her leg falls between yours, her other foot still planting solidly on top of one of yours. Carol moves closer, invading your senses, and grits her teeth, considering you with a look bordering on disdain. ‘Now, what did I say about gratitude? People gotta fear me, Jones, y’see? You – you’re ruining that with your looks-’

‘Like I said,’ you choke, more than aware of her face so close to yours and the knee pressed so closed to a place that was aching. ‘You started it, Carol-’ You choke when she pushes closer against your throat, but it is not because of this that stutter on your breath. No, it’s the way her knee rises between your legs and presses against your warm core.

She looks down at you, far taller, and smirks. ‘Thirsty fuckin’ bitch,’ she mutters, still shoving you against the wall and bruising your skin. Her knee moves, digging into you and giving you the pressure, you had fucking needed. You choke on a high breath, and Carol’s pupils dilate. ‘You stop starin’ at me so much, and maybe bitches won’t notice when I pay you little visits, huh?’ she croons, mocking and smug and smirking. ‘You remember, Jones, you’re mine’.

-

That night, you come with your hand over your mouth and the bruises on your neck sending you over the edge.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yoyo. thank you for the wonderful feedback, perverts. here’s what you wanted, you thirsty bunch. leave me kudos and follow me on tumblr (caroldenningimagines) bc i need validation. toodles!

You decide to mind your own fucking business.

You sidle closer to a few of the girls who don’t dabble in the drug game, introducing yourself and asking to join their game of Go Fish. You don’t look at Carol. You don’t even look at Badison when she waltzes past you and greets you with a, ‘How’s it goin’, Curls?’

The group of women you befriend welcome you with open arms, insisting they liked you anyway, considering you sliced up those rapists like a Christmas turkey. You had smiled at that, shrugged a little, and slid onto their table and started the game with them. Days past, and you find yourself glad to have a small circle of people of whom you sparsely interact with. You talk about the outside, about Max’s food, and about the ongoing war with D-Block.

One of the girls, a skinny Latino with curly hair and big eyes, makes a b-line for you almost every time you exit your cell in the morning. You know she wants to fuck you. You see it in the way she winks at you and tugs at your curls and calls you a pretty little thing.

Still, the lollipops you still receive every day remind you of Carol’s parting words before she had left you panting and horny as fuck in that supply closet. You’re mine, Jones. What the fuck did that even mean? What the fuck did the unhinged and bad-ass boss bitch Carol Denning want with you?

But still…it was hard to refuse Hernandez’s advances. The less attention you paid to Carol, the more you just the woman to slam you against the wall and shove her knee between your legs again. God knows why the fuck you wanted that. You wondered what would happen…if you did let Hernandez dip her head between your thighs and eat you out for-

You’re mine, Jones.

And suddenly, as you sit with your comrades and eat your slop, you envision greying hair between your legs; a glint of glasses and a wicked tongue and fingertips that dig heavily into your thighs. Would she call you a good girl again? Would she-

‘Ya’ll are thinking about fucking someone. I know that damn look. Almost every lady in this place got that look most of the time,’ one of the women drawls, pointing her plastic fork at you with an accusing eye. ‘You mind not doing that whilst I’m eatin, Jones?’ The others snort, whilst Hernandez smiles slyly at you, and you tell the woman who had spoken to you to fuck off, but with a slight grin on your face.

You eat quickly, sparing only one glance in the direction of Carol’s table. After that, you dump your tray and head for the cells, slipping past the CO’s who glare and nod for you to carry on. It’s when you’re halfway to C-Block that you hear Hernandez call for you, her tone laughy and breathless, and you turn toward her with a quirked brow.

‘Jesus,’ you scoff. ‘I wasn’t walking that fast’.

She grins, pretty and short, like you, with big brown eyes and hair that curls on a mop atop her head. This was your type. Pretty girls with lethal words and muscles beneath their soft skin. Not older, sharper women with steel in their eyes and roughness in their walk, who towered above you. You weren’t used to being so damn…submissive.

‘So,’ she drawls, invading your space with curves and quirking lips. ‘What were you thinkin’ about, just then-’ You decide, then and there, that you want her. Sure, it hadn’t been her you had imagined eating you out until you passed out, but beggars can’t be choosers, right? You want to feel skin against yours, something of which this place had deprived you of so much. You want the taste of lips and the fingers touching your sides. So, you tug her toward Hernandez toward you with a roll of your eyes and a quick smile, both of you stumbling backwards into the adjacent corridor. You didn’t have long, you knew. CO’s always patrolled the corridors in Max.

You press halfway down the hallway, your lips against hers and your hands on her wide hips. She is so fucking soft and warm and human beneath you, but…but there is something about that you suddenly aren’t all hot for. You want sharpness and biting and bruising hands-

Take what you’re fucking given, you think.

Hernandez is quick to slip her hand down the elasticated waist of your trousers, her fingers quick and smart in finding the bundle of nerves and circling there and, fuck, you’d missed it being someone else touching you there. You grasp at her, going to slip your own hand toward her warmth, but stall when voices echo down the hallway toward the Mess Hall.

‘Fuck,’ you laugh, pushing her away and wishing for more; for privacy and something this place did not offer. ‘Forgot where we were. Jesus’.

She does the same, her cheeks flushed, and her lips swollen, before she wipes her fingers on her shirt and winks at you. ‘Ah, shit. ‘Nother time maybe, Jones. I’ll slip by first. See you later, alligator, huh?’

You huff and nod as she walks away, her hands in her pockets and her cheeks quirking into a smile. You lean against the wall and blow a strand of hair from your face, still breathless and still fucking aching. You were, you sure, a red-cheeked fucking mess. Fuck it. You move forward once she rounds the corner, your footsteps hurried as you try and reach the hallway before the approaching people do-

You step into the main corridor, and almost bump straight into your fucking dorm-mate. Johnson titters and waves her hands at you, as you step back and look quickly at the two women beside her. As she speaks, scoffing in a nasty tone, ‘What’re you doin’ lurkin’ down dark corridors huh, Curly? You wanna get a shot?’ you’re too busy glancing at Carol, who eyes you with a distracted, searching gaze and a sneer growing quickly at her mouth. Her gaze meets yours, and she tilts her head, her brow cocking.

You’re mine, Jones.

You’re about to open your mouth and shoot something quick back at Johnson, but she straightens up and scatters when Carol barks, ‘Scram, you two’. There is no explanation, you notice. The two women do exactly as they are told, without even looking at each other as they nod and continue their walk. How much power did this woman fucking possess?

Johnson looks back only once. She looks, you see, overly amused.

Your attention is thrown quickly back to the women in front of you when fingers curl around your throat, and you are being pushed backward into the exact hallway that you had just tried to fucking finger Hernandez in. You gasp, slap at her hands, and glare solidly at her when you back hit the wall after ages of backing up into a dimply lit part where no one will see you.

She lingers near you, steel eyes searching, and presses those fingers tighter around your throat. ‘Coulda sworn I saw Hernandez walking away just a few seconds ago, Jones,’ she mutters, using her height to tower above you and sneer right in your face. ‘You been fucking her?’

You grasp at her fingers. ‘Well,’ you rasp, knees knocking with hers as your struggle. ‘Her hands were down my pants, if that’s what you mean – fucking hell, Carol!’ She pushes you further against the wall, a hiss escaping from between her teeth.

‘The fuck did I say to you, huh?’ Her free hand finds your hip, and her fingers squeeze tightly there. ‘You’re mine. No one in here has ever fuckin’ caught my attention like you – you’d think you’d feel fucking privileged, Jones. You’d think you’d know that your pussy is mine-’

You bite your lip, and she follows the movement with a quick flick of her gaze. You realise it’s the first time you’ve managed to get a reaction out of her; something that made her appear just a tiny bit more human. You’d caught her attention. How and why? You were nothing special. You were hardly the most fuckable girl in here – but, really, who would have fucked Carol? No one. The woman was untouchable. Petrifying.

‘Do I get a fucking say in this?’ You mutter, her fingers still tight on your throat. You were more turned on now than you had been with Hernandez’s fingers down your fucking underwear. This was harsh and close and, fuck, you just wanted to drop to your fucking knees for this woman. You were sure you pupils must be the size of fucking dinner plates.

Carol dips her head lower, her fingers tilting your head up. ‘You wanna go fucking the other girls in here?’ She snorts, a quiet and childish sound that seems somehow fitting for her. She sneers, her gaze level with yours and her body pressing you all the closer against the wall. You look up at her, breathless and open and, fuck, you were beyond fucking ruined just from her being close to you. ‘Look at you,’ she croons, and her voice becomes just that much softer; soft but cruel. ‘For such a smart girl, you say some stupid fucking things, Jones. You. Are. Mine’.

She does two things then. First, the hand at your thigh dips quickly to press at you from over your trousers, hard and quick and so fucking perfectly that a quick cry catches in your throat. Second, her head dips to the crook of your neck, where she nudges aside your shirt. You gasp when you feel teeth attack you there, her bite solid and painful and just fucking wonderful. The hand around your neck slips over you mouth, covering the panted cries as she coos at you, her smirk smug and her eyes fixed on you and her hand working you roughly through your uniform.

You come undone when she mutters roughly, ‘Such a fucking good girl. C’mon, look at me’. You do, your eyelashes fluttering as you watch her pupils darken and her jaw tighten as she leans into palming you, your moan pressed against her palm and your orgasm sending you nearly toppling to the fucking floor.

She leaves you there with a quick lick at the blood beading at the bite mark on your shoulder, and flick of her thumb across your cheekbones. ‘That’s my girl,’ she mutters. ‘If I see you with anyone like that again, I’ll fucking kill you’.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> forgive me father for i have sinned. also i need to go to bed bc it’s 1:15 and i’m busy as fuck tomorrow. thank you for the feedback, guys and gals and everything else. toodles!

You’re not so stupid that you assume you can go anywhere near Carol now.

Carol was the Queen of C-Block. She was untouchable and powerful and the definition of an unhinged, unpredictable nut-job – she needed people to fear her, and the moment she showed someone like you favouritism…well. She’d told you what would happen.

You swayed away from Hernandez’s further advances, knowing that it would only put both you and her in danger if you decided to play with fire. Somehow, though, you didn’t care. You had felt Carol; felt her fingers so close to you and see her eyes when you had come under her touch…Even having your mouth pressed against some woman’s pussy or riding some guys dick…nothing could compare to how fucking good it had felt.

You were aware that you were fucked.

You share a phone call with your mother, insisting that you were staying out of trouble and that you were only mingling with the ‘good’ of the prison. A fucking lie, of course. She tells you that she still gets people knocking on the door, insisting that you did the right thing. You tell her that doesn’t really matter, because doing the right thing got you locked up.

She sighs, and you say goodbye and tell her you love her.

You wonder what your mother would think if she knew you had become some murderers fucking property. Carol and her sister were the Little Debbie Murderers – she was a fucking psycho. There was nothing redeeming about her crime; nothing that defended her actions. So why were you so obsessed with her bruising hands and the flick of her tongue. Why, when you prided yourself on being so fucking independent, did you come undone when she called you hers.

Because, you knew, you wanted her to fuck you until you didn’t even know your own name.

You read whatever is delivered to your cell that day, and Johnson does the same. You bunk-mate lounges on the top bunk, whilst you lean against the bottom one with your tongue stuck between your teeth and your mind processing the words of War & Peace. You’d read the book back when you were twenty, a few years ago and even then, you found it the most boring piece of shit.

Apparently, prior readers had thought the same, and various crude opinions were jotted into the pages.

‘Jesus,’ you snipe. ‘This brick is so fucking boring-’

‘You know, Jones, appreciating the little things might help ya get through every day life, ya know,’ a voice drawls from the doorway, and you squint to see the large and ginger CO standing with her arms crossed and her brow cocked. ‘Words feed the soul, or whatever-’

You cock a brow right back at the CO, who stands just outside your cell. ‘Maybe if Leonard’s didn’t keep nabbing The Handmaid’s Tale, I’d be less mind-numbingly bored-’

Ginger shakes her head at you and steps away. ‘Happiness comes from the inside, out!’ she calls, already waving her hand in your direction as she departs the outside of your cell.

‘The fuck is The Handmaid’s Tale?’ Johnson grunts from above you.

‘A book,’ you reply, dry and balancing the heavy text on your knees. ‘One of the few books in here I actually enjoy’.

Johnson grunts again, and that’s the end of the conversation.

-

‘I’ve got something for you’.

You jump, halfway through tugging off your grey shirt, and trip to face Carol, who stands in the humid shower room, still in her clothes. She tilts her head at you, her pale brow cocked. You stand in just your white undershirt and trousers and shoes, blinking hard at her. ‘Where the fuck did everyone else go?’

She shrugs one shoulder, smug and sharp. ‘They do what I say’.

For a second, you worry. Was this it, you wondered? Would she shiv you right here, right now, having grown tired of playing with you? You watch her, and she watches you, your brow furrowed and your cheeks dusting when you remember the last time you had spoken to her. ‘Of course, they do,’ you reply, and she smirks in response.

‘Heard there’s a certain book you’ve been achin’ to get your hands on,’ she drawls, and with that she tugs up her shirt and pulls a red book from the waistband of her trousers, her eyes never leaving yours, before she flashes the cover to you.

You blink, your shirt still dangling uselessly in your hands. ‘Oh,’ is all you can say. ‘Take it there’s something you want for it?’

Carol takes a step forward, her trainers slapping against the wet floor and her mouth suddenly falling into a serious flat line. You huff in a breath when her eyes scan your form, from your white top to the wet hem of your trousers. ‘Take it you were gonna start undressing before I came along, huh?’ She tilts her head, her expression blank and her eyes like steel. ‘Carry on’.

You freeze, unsure if she is joking or not. Sure, you were used to being naked in front of people by now. Privacy did not exist here. Still, there was something so different about…undressing for someone. For her. Carol’s expression grows that much tighter as you pause, and you nod quickly and swallow, your stomach flopping as you hum in agreement.

She stands and watches as you tug off your trousers, revealing the dark skin of your legs, and replace your shoes with your shower sandals. You blush under her gaze, hating yourself for feeling like a fucking virgin. She doesn’t move, only catches your gaze sharply whenever you look up at her, and finally looks you up and down when you stand in your stiff bra and your white underwear. You don’t miss the pleased smirk when she catches the bruising bite mark on your left shoulder.

‘You shower in your underwear?’ she drawls, and you quirk a quick grin. You knew, somehow, that would let you go if you refused to do this. Perhaps it was the fact that none of her usual posse stood by her, or the way she set four feet between you and her. Either way, you feel hot all over and nervous as fuck as you snap your bra off, dump it on the bench, and shimmy quickly out of your underwear.

You stand before her, your skin moist from the air and your chest rising and falling, and you all but come at the sight of her dark stare and her fingers grasping the book with an iron grip.

‘Shower,’ she orders, voice low and sharp, and you do just that.

You step under the water; the temperature a tepid and shit and face the wall with your jaw set and your skin hot. You wondered why she wanted this. Was this her thing, to watch instead of getting involved? Was it some kind of power move-?

‘You ever finger-fucked yourself in the shower, Jones?’ You turn to her, your mouth curling into an amused smile that you have to squash, and your skin soaking wet from the water. She watches you, standing just slightly closer now, and she slowly settles down onto the bench just in front of your stall. ‘You wanna do that for me now?’

You scoff. ‘Why – want me to show you how it’s done?’ You freeze when she straightens up and cocks a brow at you and, oh, you were right before. This woman, this woman who had been locked up for over half her life, had never touched another woman. She didn’t know how. Suddenly, you were the one in power. You were the one who controlled the situation. You were the one who taught her something. ‘Oh’.

You blink at her, at her rising and falling shoulders and the tongue that darts out to lick her lips, before breathing in deeply and nodding. You weren’t complaining. Not at all. You were fucking hot anyway, with her ordering you around and staring at you with those cold eyes and, fuck, she had made you come the other day. You were the first person she did that to.

You don’t even realise you’ve snaked your hand down to the mound of hair between your legs.

You watch her gaze follow you hand, and you lean up against the tiled dirty wall and bend one leg as you find the bundle of nerves there, your fingers coming to circle where there was already wetness. You watch her, more interested in her reaction than your own. You breathe in, your fingers slipping further down as your palm comes to rest at the top of your mound, and your breath hitches.

‘After that day in the supply closet,’ you tell her, and her dark gaze jumps to your face. ‘I came in my bunk thinking about you’. She offers you an almost sneer; there is nothing soft about the way in which she looks at you. Carol wanted something, and she got it. You knew that this was how she worked. An unhinged wolf trapped among sheep.

You work yourself over, for once not having to imagine the woman in front of you. You wonder what dangerous game you’re playing. You wonder why you were pushing yourself to be more involved with this fucking gang boss. Right now, with her pupils blown wide and her mouth slightly parted, you could not care fucking less. ‘I’m gonna be the one making your come one day,’ you promise. ‘I’m not just your bitch, Carol’.

At that, she swallows and bites her bottom lip.

Your chest jumps, and you circle your fingers faster, watching her legs part and her elbows come to rest on her knees as she gazes at you, her look calculating and hungry. ‘Don’t even have to fucking touch you and I do you better than fucking Hernandez,’ she mutters. You keen and nod, your gaze fluttering closed only briefly, before she barks, ‘Open your fucking eyes, Rianne. I want you to look at me when you come’.

You do, and you let your breathy moan echo quietly about you as you palm yourself through the nerve jumping orgasm, and you hardly notice as she stands and tugs you from the shower, her dry hands pushing yours aside and dipping between your legs. She breathes close to your face as you lean against her, sensitive and breathless, and laugh when she draws her fingers to her lips and dips them into her mouth.

She hums at the new taste, her glasses steaming up. ‘Tastes like fuckin’ strawberries’.

You stand against her, still naked and still soaking wet, and wonder who she had guarding the showers. ‘Can I have my book now?’

‘Little fucking shit’.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ummmmm sooooo you guys are amazing and thank you to @caroldammmmnings.tumblr.com for giving me the idea for this chapter lmao. toodles gays x

You feel like you have some dirty little secret that you’re hiding from the rest of the Block.

You wonder what Badison would think, if she knew how you had seen just that little twinge of weakness – that slight break of steely exterior in her feared fucking leader. She followed Carol about, and the younger of the C-Block bitches followed Badison about like a bunch of fucking lap-dogs.

You would never dare say anything. You would never even dare assume that after Carol watching you fuck yourself in that empty shower block, that you could be any closer to the woman. Part of you liked the secrecy. Another part of you wanted everyone in Max to know that the more terrifying of the Denning sisters wanted you.

You continue to sit with your fellow inmates, always making sure to slide far away from Hernandez should the woman eve throw a look in your direction. Your coldness was for her fucking benefit, too. Whist Carol had threatened to kill you, God knows what she would do to the other woman. Part of you was surprised at how little you cared about throwing Hernandez aside, but her put-out expression only lasted for a short while.

In here, someone who looked like Hernandez had her fucking pickings of what pussy she wanted next.

You read the worn copy of The Handmaid’s Tale whenever you have the chance, almost wanting Carol to see you and have a harsh reminder of what you had done to get the book. It wasn’t like you, to do something like that with someone like Carol, but something about the cold woman drew you in and you didn’t fucking know why.

You don’t talk to her for days after the shower incident, and you wake up every morning and touch the healing bite mark on your shoulder and wish to fucking God that today will bring about the day that Carol finds some new way to corner you with her bruising fingertips and her warm mouth that you wanted so fucking badly to bite at-

You see her, then. She walks into the area outside of the cells with Johnson and Badison either side of her, and the women in her posse who sit at her table scramble to make room for her. She hardly looks at them as she sits down, her fingers pressing against the table as she does so, and her mouth drawn into its usual scowl, and you revel in the fact that you were her good girl. Had she ever called anyone else that-?

Fuck, you were so whipped.

You sit in the sparsely populated area with the book in your hand and your legs crossed on the bench, facing the direction of the Carol and her crew. Women filter in between the space, conversing with each other and taking up tables to plait each other’s hair, but all the while you glance at Carol over your book before, finally, reaching into your pocket and pulling out the lollipop you had found under your pillow the evening prior.

Not that you had been planning this, or anything.

You weren’t used to waiting. You were used to getting shit done. Hell, your Professors on the outside, back in College, had told you that you needed to calm the fuck down and slow down a dozen fucking times. Your mother had told you that you were a wild kid, always wanting to find out the newest thing and asking questions left, right and centre. In your relationships, you were not used to fucking waiting.

Dammit, you wanted to show Carol what being with a girl like you felt like.

So, you unwrap the sticky paper and pop the candy into your mouth, savouring the quick burst of flavour and quickly picking up your book again. You had tied your hair up specifically that morning, ridding your face of the wild curls, just so she could see how fucking hard you could suck this damn lollipop.

After five minutes of you licking and pretending to read, she glances up from the low conversation that rules her table.

You immediately meet her gaze, your eyelashes low and your tongue darting out to lick the side of the lollipop, from stick to centre. You know you’re playing with fire. You know she is going to be fucking pissed at you. Somehow, despite the terror that was Carol Denning, you don’t care. For two months you had been wading through the shit-show that was Litchfield Max, and this cold woman gave you warmth in the form of bite marks and bruises and quiet praise. You were addicted.

She watches you, and you see the moment she zones entirely out of the conversation happening around her. Her mouth opens just slightly, and you suck the lollipop into your mouth, your cheeks hollowing and your eyebrow arching. She cocks a brow, and you open your mouth, check to see if anyone is looking, and drag the lollipop down your exposed tongue-

Carol stands sharply, barks something to her comrades, and stalks toward her cell without another look to you.

You blink after her, your stomach swooping and your tongue hanging uselessly from your mouth. You crack your teeth down innocently on the lollipop when Hellman gives you an odd look from the Guards Bubble. As you chew the hard candy, you wonder if…if you had fucking affected her that much.

The thought turns you on more than you thought it would. Jesus, the thought of Carol panting and whining like you had been…would she even make a sound? She was beyond being a grown fucking woman; one who had been in here for decades…had anyone made the terrifying woman fall to her knees and come like a fucking teenager?

You’re standing before your brain can even register what you’re doing. You slip your book into the waistband of your trousers and discard of your lollipop stick with a flick of your fingers, your dark eyes watching as the C-Block Bitches disperse from their tables when the bell for Yard time rings. You pause, looking like a fucking idiot as you stand in the middle of the rush, and watch as inconspicuously as you can to see if Carol leaves her cell.

You swallow when she does not.

It takes all your willpower to make your legs move and walk in the direction of her cell, with the door open and the entire presence of the cell unwelcoming. No one went into Carol’s cell uninvited. That was law.

And yet, here you were, stalking toward her cell with a quick glance toward the Guards in the empty area. No one was looking – no one would see-

You are slammed against the wall the moment you enter her cell, the familiar feel of fingers at your throat and heat rushing to your belly yanking you from your thoughts. She sneers at your and, fuck, she had been waiting. ‘The fuck you think you’re playing at, huh?’ she mutters, all glinting glasses and thick hair and knees pushing you to the wall. ‘What did I tell you, Jones?’

Your mind is blank, be it from the lack of oxygen or the whirlwind of being yanked so close to the woman after long days of not even being able to look at her, but there is only one thought running through your brain, and that is how Carol Denning would taste.

You want to see her flushed and latching onto another emotion; one of happiness or relaxation. You want this woman to turn from steel to jelly beneath your fingers. You want her, the Queen of C-Block, to know why you were good for her.

So, with quick fingers and eye locked on hers, you slip your fingers beneath the waistband of her trousers and tug her closer and feeling warm skin beneath. She pauses, eyes widening in warning and mouth flattening into a line, but you don’t miss the way her fingers loosen against your throat. You manage to speak, quiet and soft, and watch her expression stay utterly frozen. ‘I can make you feel good, Carol,’ you murmur, your fingers dancing just a little bit lower until you feel the brush of soft curls. ‘You deserve to feel good’.

Yeah, maybe three years of Majoring in Psychology helped you realise this woman had a serious case of trust issues and opening up to others.

You take her silence as affirmation, her eyes never leaving yours, and you finally slip your fingers lower, until you touch her. She is warm and wet, and her free arm comes up to rest against the wall, just above you head, as she leans in closer to you.

The fingers around your throat loosen until they just graze there, and you ever take you eyes away from hers, your fingers swirling and touching and learning from her minute reactions what she likes. You breathe into her space, your breath mingling with hers as you watch her pupils dilate and hear her breath hitch until, finally, she sighs and moves to rest her forehead against your shoulder.

‘Fuck,’ she mutters, and you grin in triumph when she cannot see you. ‘You fuckin’ tell anyone-’ She chokes on a breath when you press harder, your two fingers slicker than ever as you swirl against her bundle of nerves, your own breath heavy against her thick hair. ‘Such a fuckin’ good girl-’

It’s your turn to whimper against her ear, her words sending you yanking your hand from her trousers and pushing her away. She stumbles only briefly, her brow furrowed and mouth forming words of anger, but in your haze of horniness you only want one thing.

‘I want to eat you out until you can’t fucking walk,’ you tell her, pulling her by the waistband to swap places with you, so that she’s the one against the wall. You’re only half-shocked when she does what you say, and not shocked at all when she grabs you by the back of your neck, draws your face close to hers, and mutters,

‘You gonna get on your damn knees for me, Jones?’

You do, risking only one glance toward the open door (you were hidden, you know, but still worried) and hum when Carol mutters that not even the guards would bother her. You waste no time in dropping to your knees, glancing up at her through your lashes, and finally pulling down her trousers. Her skin is pale and bare, and you can already see the moisture seeping through her underwear.

It takes you only seconds to pull her white underwear down to her knees, throw her leg over your shoulder, and press your more than ready mouth against her sweet wet folds and, fucking hell, you feel her shudder beneath you. You wonder how you got here, with this woman opening herself to you and allowing you to push her hard against the wall and eat her out like your life depended on it.

Fuck. She grabs at your head and yanks off your hairband, pulling you roughly forward as your fingers curl upward, finding a place in the warmth inside of her, and your tongue paints fucking poetry on her clit. She swears above you, breathless and sounding nothing like the Carol who ran C-Block. Her fingernails scratch at your scalp, and you whimper against her and graze your teeth along her and-

You look up at her when she comes, your fingers working her through her orgasm and your mouth still wet from her pussy. She fists your hair, her mouth opening in a silent cry and shoulders pushing back as she pushes the back of her head against the white wall.

You’re breathless when she drags you up, her trousers and underwear still around her knees. You watch this woman collect herself, from her flushed cheeks to her pupils dilating, and you wonder how long it had been since she had someone this close to her. She eyes with you a calculating look, her chest still heaving, and her mouth quirking into a smug little smirk.

You want to remind her that you were the one who should be smug right now.

She yanks your face up to hers with a twist of your curls, her nose brushing against yours and her glasses skimming your cheeks. ‘You won’t let anyone else do that to you,’ you mutter, wincing against her hold on your hair.

She twists even tighter. ‘You telling me what to do, Rianne?’

You brush your nose against hers, knowing that just one more push would have your lips against hers. ‘No,’ you inform her, your own smirk gracing your features. ‘I’m telling you what you already know, boss’.

She smirks even wider, then. As she pulls up her trousers, her eyes never leaving yours, she inquires if you are enjoying the book she slaved to get for you. You cock a brow at that, voicing that you were entirely sure Badison had done most of the work.

She looks at your sharply, standing before you now, almost half a foot taller, and you breathe in deeply when her fingers come to skim across your cheek. ‘What have I told you about gratitude, Jones?’

You shrug. ‘I think I just showed you how fucking grateful I am, Carol’.

At that, her smirk turns wicked, before she shoves you from her cell with a squeeze to your side and flick of her fingers across your healing bite mark. You decide, as you walk back to your cell whilst wiping at your mouth, that you were most certainly Carol Denning’s.

But perhaps, somehow, she could be yours, too.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you guys are literally the best. i have over 130 followers on tumblr in like 3 days wtffffff. thank u so much for the feedback and the kind words bc u guys are angels. have fun! ;)

You find yourself wondering how many noises you could drag out of her.

It’s the day after you had pinned her hips against the wall and tasted the stand-offish woman; a secret that you would take to the fucking grave. You wonder if the CO’s had an inkling of the relationship – you were sure they saw everything. They were always watching the inmates and chatting to low voices with each other. Sometimes you wondered if they wanted you all to break the rules.

You were standing too close to the sun, you knew. Carol was dangerous. It was likely she saw you as nothing else than another one of the women in Max who she dug her claws into and dragged into her bubble of madness. You were thankful she hadn’t tried to recruit you – you enjoyed your quiet life in Max as much as you could. You read, you ate, you engaged in conversation sometimes, and you thought about your life after.

You had years.

You wonder how the woman thinks. If she does think. You wonder how she sees you; does she understand you’re not stupid, or does she smirk at the way you are so desperate to get in her pants? You’re a sucker for a rough and tough lady, what can you say?

You’re in the Yard the next day, and the attention you gain from her is not something you want. You’re standing with the women who had welcomed you partially into their little group, and Hernandez is standing too close to you. You don’t notice it until she laughs at something the eldest of the group says, and her elbow nudges against yours.

You don’t even think that Carol might see.

All you see is Hernandez turning to you, mid-laugh, and you think about how you had missed having friends. Sure, on the outside, you didn’t have many. You were an NYU graduate, working your ass off in some shitty job working your way up to be a Child Psychologist (the irony isn’t missed on you), you didn’t have time for friends. You had the people you needed to talk to, and you had your work. But here…you start to appreciate the companionship of women, and the laughter and the jokes and the pack mentality.

You’re nudging Hernandez with a scoff when you see movement in the corner of your eye.

You don’t know the woman’s name. You know she’s forty-something with dreads and one missing tooth, and that she hands around in the salon with Carol a lot. You know she’s one of the ones to not fuck with, and you know she’s been known to kick the shit out of some of the other women.

You hardly have time to warn Hernandez before the nameless woman is grabbing her by the shoulder and ramming a shiv into her back.

You don’t yell or scream. You just blink as the women you stand with shout out profanities and the nameless woman is dragged away, and the CO’s are telling you to all get to the ground now. You do, your heart hammering and your mind numb with shock, and you turn as you crawl onto your knees and look around to find her, her cold eyes on you and her knees hitting the ground, and you know what the smirk on her mouth says.

It says, I warned you, Jones.

-

You find out twenty-four hours later, when you have all been searched after being locked in your cells, that Hernandez was in the Infirmary. Alive, but pretty fucked up. Johnson had hardly spoken to you in those twenty-four hours, only humming a pretty tune and giving you a few pointed looks. You wonder if she knows.

She was one of Carol’s most trusted.

It’s perhaps the first time you realise how fucked you are. It’s the first time you realise how much more you should care that this woman saw you as hers and only hers. Thing is, it just makes you feel like you want her to brand you all over; leave bite marks in your most intimate places and most obvious places so everyone could know that Carol Denning had you.

But you wanted her.

After you and your cell have been searched for a second time, Johnson leans away from the wall as the CO’s disperse and tell everyone that they can go to breakfast, and she turns to you with a pointed look. ‘Think you better get yourself over to the salon, Curly Wurly’.

Oh, you think. Oh, fuck.

You go. You were fucking starving, but you go. You weave through the antsy inmates and ignore their wonderings of what Hernandez could have done for Carol to make a hit on her like that. It was no fucking secret that Carol would have been the one to call for the hit. If anything fucked up happened in C-Block, it was usually due to the woman’s orders to her lackies.

When Carol is in the salon, no one is to disturb her unless called to do so. The woman cared to be pampered, you know, from her feet to the top of her 80’s styled hair.

You stand in the doorway, arms hanging at your sides and watch as the two twins, more nameless inmates, flutter around Carol. One rubs some flowery smelling, cheat moisturiser into her hands, and the other runs a brush through the greying thick locks.

They stop when they see you, and Carol doesn’t even turn around when she orders. ‘Leave us, please, ladies,’ in a bordering bored tone. They slap past you as you step into the room, neither looking you in the eye as they, presumably, go to stand guard. You heart hammers in your chest, and your palms begins to sweat. She wouldn’t do anything to me here. It’s too obvious.

‘I lost one of my most loyal bitches because of you,’ Carol muses, still facing away from as she studies her nails and crosses one leg over the other.

You bristle and hold back your angry words. Controlling your pissed of comebacks was something you’d had trouble with all your life. Carol had been lenient so far…but you knew how quickly the woman could switch. With your throat bobbing with a tight swallow, you stay silent.

‘The fuck did I say about Hernandez, Rianne-?’

Your self-control, apparently, is fucking horrendous. You take a step forward, and Carol’s hand drops to her lap as she hears the sound. ‘Was I sticking my fucking tongue down her throat?’ you snap, fists clenching at your sides. ‘No. I was fucking talking to her because she’s my friend-’

Carol snorts. ‘Friend? Who needs friends in this fucking place-?’

‘Oh, fuck off, Carol. You’re telling me you don’t look for a little companionship in this hell-hole. Oh, wait-’ She spins from the chair, pushing herself off with lithe fingers and glasses glinted in the harsh light of the salon as she reaches for your ponytail and yanks it back. You figure she had to keep her reflexes quick, having been here for so many fucking years, but you’re still a little pissed off that you let someone decades older than you surprise you like that. Your words die in your throat.

‘I’d be careful with my fucking words if I were you, Jones,’ she sneers quietly, glaring down at you as she yanks just a little bit harder. ‘Remember who you’re fuckin’ talking to’.

You grimace at her, the pain from her pulling at your hair making your eyes water. Fuck her advantage of height. ‘Hard to forget,’ you mutter bitterly. ‘You gonna order your posse to slice up everyone I dare to talk to?’

She manages a sneer of a smirk, but there is no kindness in the look. ‘Only the ones that have touched that hole between your legs that belongs to me-’

You hum and pull at your hair, and it is only then that you realise you almost enjoy the feeling off her fingers pulling the strands. ‘Wonder what that’s sister of yours would think if she knew you liked pussy so much’. She starts to yank again, but you plough on, your stomach stirring at the heat in her gaze and the sneer on her mouth. You were poking the bear, but you loved it. ‘Well maybe not. Maybe just my pussy-’

‘Little bitch,’ she says roughly, before she yanks so hard that you half moan/half yelp, only to find that she had pulled the elastic band from your hand and thrown it to the side. ‘Wear your hair down,’ she orders, eyeing you with crazed blue eyes and fingers fisting not quite as hard at the wild strands, her nails nipping at your skull. ‘That a fuckin’ order, Jones’.

You haven’t a moment to reply before she’s yanking you around and wrapping her fingers around either side of your waist, one-too-gently pushing you toward the wall where a tacky poster of various hairstyles sits wonkily. You breathe in deeply when she whispers filthy things in your ear and pulls your lower half back by your hips as your forehead hits the wall. ‘Fuckin’ Hernandez. Bitch doesn’t know what to do with someone like you, huh? You’re fuckin’ made to be mine, Joes. Y’hear that? You’re gonna feel so fucking good you won’t ever want anyone else fucking you-’

You’re half-listening, so wrapped up how fucking turned on and flustered you are, and your fingers press against the wall in front of your as you breathe hot, moist air against the wall. She wastes no time in reaching around and shoving her hand roughly down your trousers and sipping beneath your underwear, her quick fingers oddly gentle when they part your folds and fid your clit.

You hum, and she digs her chin against your shoulder, her breath hot and her words a rush and, fuck, this woman spoke far too much. She moves quickly – so quick that you’re overly sensitive and panting helplessly against the wall and writhing into her front. You feel her glasses knock against the back of your head as you lean back and try your hardest to quell your pants and, fuck, this might be the fastest anyone has ever made you come.

‘Have you ever even fucking done this before?’ you mutter, and all but sing a fucking hymn when her teeth graze your earlobe. She parts her fingers and pinches lightly, and you see fucking stars.

‘Fast learner,’ she mutters roughly, and you wonder had you asked her in any other situation, would she have been so honest. You tell her breathlessly to go faster, and she does, her pants hot against your ear and the hand gripping your hip tightly coming up to land where yours rests, against the wall.

You wonder, ever so briefly through your hooded gaze, what your fingers would look like intertwined on that wall.

She presses you against the wall so that you can feel the curve of her breasts and the sharpness of her ribs pressing into your back, and you come with her fingers working you quickly and roughly and her whispered, ‘Fucking come, Rianne', sending you over the edge.

You do, and you hear a genuine chuckle escape her as you collapse back against her and mutter her name; a sparse whisper in the quiet of the salon and with her fingers still dipped into your wetness. There is a moment, just a moment, that the way you are stood together could be considered some fucked up form of an embrace.

‘Sing my name, baby,’ she mutters smugly, pulling her hand from your underwear, and the other from the wall. She pinches your side and flattens a hand against the back of your head and pulls you round, gives you a sly once-over, before she backs away. You realise, as you watch her go and she orders you to clean yourself up before she tells the others come back, that you feel cold without the presence of her against you and think, for the first time, that you really, really are fucked.

In a lot of ways.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> chapter10 wtf???? anyway you guys are really liking this, so i hope this chapter is good! i am so used to writing slow burns that last like 40 chapter until people actually get together, so i don’t feel too far out of my comfort zone. that being said, one with the show! also sorry for any spelling mistakes i’m lazy and tired and have to be up early tomorrow

Your mom asks you why your neck is bruised.

You frown, at first, because you were sure that all the bruising was gone. That had been well over a week ago; hell, even the bite mark was a faded red line by now. You blink at her, struggle to make up a lie, before simply shrugging and telling her you don’t know.

She peers at you, your mother who looks so much like you, and simply nods. She knows there are certain things in prison that she cannot understand. You had told her dynamics were that of survival. She tells you your sister is doing better – she doesn’t have night terrors anymore. You smile at that, and your mum says that your father and Lily had gone away for a few days camping.

‘You should have gone with them,’ you insist, the germ-ridden phone pressed to your ear and your mother looking at you through the smudged glass. Around you, the hum of familiar inmates crying, laughing or merely looking longingly at their visitors surrounds you. You frown at your mother. ‘…Why didn’t you, mom?’

She chokes out a laugh, and it is sudden and bitter and the tears bite at her eyes. Your stomach drops; you can’t handle terrible news. Not in here. Not when there was no where to escape. You ask what’s wrong, and you haven’t heard your voice so quiet and so weak in such a long time.

You haven’t seen your mom look so utterly heartbroken since you had arrived back home after finally tracking down those scumbags’ names and addresses in some seedy part of the City, after fucking weeks of hounding the worst of the worst. You had come home, numb and so terrified at what you had just done (and how little repulsion you felt) and shown your bloody hands and shirt to your pale parents and held your sobbing mother’s hands until the cops came.

She tells you she has breast cancer. She tells you it isn’t too far along, so there is hope – the Doctors were very positive on this fact. She tells you not to worry and that she feels fine.

You wish more than anything, as your fingers press against the glass and your mother looks at you like she is made of glass and you are paper wrapping, that you could smell your mother’s warm perfume and touch her soft skin.

You can’t.

You don’t.

You go back to C-Block, and you wonder if there was a God at all.

-

The top bunk becomes a sight you stare at a lot over the next three days. You don’t cry. There is no room for crying. You wonder if brutally murdering two men and seeing their insides makes crying a little harder. To be fair, you had never really been a crier, even when your grandparents had died.

You think about the fact Carol had murdered her little sister, with Barb, when they were just teenagers.

How juxtaposed your two situations were. Carol was in here for taking her little sister’s life, and you were in here for ensuring your little sister would live a fear free one. 

On the fourth morning of curling into your bed and eating food from commissary, Johnsons taps at your bunk and frowns at you with a mock concerned expression. She had mostly ignored you the past few days, only offering sighs and rolling eyes at your quiet, lonesome behaviour. ‘The fuck you in such a sour mood for?’ she inquires. ‘It’s like sharing a bunk with my damn teenager’.

You look away only briefly from the top bunk, eye her for a moment, before looking back to your favourite spot, where a stain as falling through the mattress. ‘If Carol wants to know where I am,’ you reply, tired of pretending that Johnson wasn’t one of the few people who knew Carol liked to shove her hands down your pants. ‘She can ask me herself or use her own fucking hand to get off’.

Johnson bestows you with a shake of her head and a sighing chuckle. ‘You’re gonna get yourself in some trouble someday, Curls. You better watch how you go talkin’ about Carol, now. Respect damn is key-’

You turn solidly away and curl on your side, bored of the conversation and instead staring at the wall.

You fall asleep and try not to think about how lovely it had been to take your utter rage out on those men. You try not to think about their skin splitting and their blood pouring, and how right now you wished that there was some solid form for you to beat the shit out of; a reason for your horrible rage.

-

You wake up to a heavy weight settling across your hips, and you go bolt upright and fucking yell for a CO because, fucking hell, is this is Badison or some shit-

It isn’t. A cold hand settles over your mouth and sharp knees settle either side of you, and you see glasses and thick hair her a wrinkled brow, and you heave out a sigh. ‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ you swear, bleary with sleep and confusion.

Carol sits atop you, her hand slowly sliding away from your mother and her smirk not at all friendly. You frown at her, befuddled, before glancing at your closed cell door. How the fuck? ‘I got some shit Hellman found useful,’ she mutters, before her hands slowly glide down to where yours rest, either side of you. ‘Johnson told me what you said. The fuck have I said about gratitude, Jones?’

For a second, your mouth drops open and she seizes your wrists, her suddenly calm exterior sharper than ever. She yanks them to rest above your head, and her face flashes down to yours. ‘Fuck you, Johnson,’ you mutter, sure that the woman was awake and listening.

Carol peers at you, her fingernails digging into your skin. ‘She went to sleep with some tissue in her ears,’ Carol murmurs, the smug smirk tugging at her mouth once again. ‘I warned her I’d be payin’ you a visit-’

You try not to think about how close she was to you, and how much you want to tug at her hair like she liked to tug at yours. An odd thing to think about someone who was going to slice you, just to send a message. Not kill, but hurt. Carol needs respect, and this is how she got it. ‘You gonna fuckin’ carve you initials into my stomach so I remember whose boss?’ you mutter disdainfully.

She throws you a mock interested look, still so close to you that you can smell the hit of toothpaste on her breath. ‘No,’ she replies lowly. ‘I wanna know why you think you can fuckin’ disappear like some damn brat-’

‘My mom has cancer,’ you spit out, your nose knocking with hers. ‘And my little sister is still fucked up from the two men that raped her, and I’m fuckin’ stuck in here’.

Carol looks at you, pulls a satisfied face, and says, ‘Well, that’s a fuckin’ bummer, Jones’.

You scoff and sneer at her. ‘Like you’d fuckin’ know. You drowned your little sister when you were sixteen. You wouldn’t know caring if it bit you in the damn ass, Carol-’

The familiar feeling of her fingers finding your throat stings a little, but you grit your teeth and take the pain. Part of you wonders if you kind of wanted this; this feeling other than anger and sadness. ‘You don’t know a damn shittin’ thing about it, Jones, so don’t go running your fuckin’ mouth about that brat,’ she seethes, digging in so hard that you choke a little underneath her. ‘Doing the right thing,’ she mocks. ‘Got you stuck in this fuckin’ place’.

‘That’s bullsit,’ you rasp.

‘It’s the bull-fucking-truth,’ Carol seethes, her grip tightening, before it loosens, and she leans back a little. ‘Now, you gonna let me do what I came in here to fuckin’ do, and cheer you the fuck up? Or you wanan keep talkin’ about your fuckin’ feelings’.

You stare at her, blank and bitter, and she smirks that wicked fucking smirk. She shifts and moves side to side on you, her hands leaving your wrists to pull down the comforter and reveal your stiff sleep clothes, and you wonder how fucked up and uncaring she truly was on the inside. Just enough to fuck you into cheering up. That’s something. ‘Now,’ she muses, leaning forward so you are chest to chest again. You feel her fingers sliding beneath your trousers. ‘Let’s turn that frown into a fucking O-’

You gasp when your feel her fingers slip suddenly inside of you with no warning, and your fingers fist into the mattress as you swear. She leers down at you, smug and chuckling and ghosting her warm breath over your face.

After five minutes of her muttering and you ensuring that Johnson was sound asleep, she crooks her fingers inside of you and watches as you utterly fall apart beneath her, your fingers digging into her back and your chest heaving. All the way, her blue eyes never stray from yours, and her smirk is near constant.

When she crawls down your body, leaving you shaking and panting, your attempt to tug off her shirt with her, only to have her ask what the fuck you think you’re doing. ‘I just want to see more of you, idiot,’ you gasp quietly in the quiet, and she pauses for the briefest of fucking moments, halfway down you and her brow cocks slightly.

You manage to get her down to her bra, and you think that you’ve never seen such a fucking sight.

She ghosts her breath against your most intimate area, before mimicking what you had done to her and leaving her fingers inside of you and mouth enveloping your clit and her fingers digging into your exposed thighs and, Jesus fucking Christ, you fist your hands into her hair and tug.

And Carol…Carol fucking moans against you.

She is as rough as ever and pulling you close to her face as she sucks and licks and bites and bites, but your ears still ring from that one, small moan. There are things I can get away with, you think. You can call her an idiot and pull her precious hair and tell her to fuck off, and she bruises and hurts you, but she moaned and searches for a way to make you come.

It’s perhaps the not the first time you realise the power that sex can have, but the first time you realise the small, miniscule amount of power you have in this situation.

You lean into her, your back arching as she sucks, and you must slap a hand over your mouth to cover your gasps. She is fast and bruising, and pulls away only to mutter things to you and bite so hard at the inside of your thighs, you feel one bite sting so bad that you figure she has drawn blood.

You tug at her hair one last time when you know you’re about to come (because you didn’t want to be greedy and let her figure out that she had even made the noise), and feel her head between your legs and come to the sound and feel of her humming and moaning so fucking shortly against you.

How the fuck had she never done that before?

‘Look at me,’ she murmurs, and when you do, you see your wetness on her mouth and her eyes dark as the night, and you huff a laugh and let your hand remain in her and ask,

‘Let me guess, if I tell anyone you’ll kill me?’

She smirks and wipes her mouth roughly, already crawling up sit on you again. Even in your haze of nerves and dazedness, you realise she must like the show of power. She hovers above you, all pale skin and bust and shitty white prison bra, and you look at this woman as so few had seen her.

You’re fucking breathless.

She leans close, sneers a smirk, and says, ‘You tell anyone, and I’ll fuckin’ gut you, same as Johnson. I’m not afraid to fuck up that pretty. Little. Face-’

You shut her up by leaning up suddenly on your elbows and nearly knocking the glasses from her face. With a distracted eye, you tilt her chin back with a nudge of your hand in her hair, and lick her from cleavage to chin with so much speed it leaves you reeling.

She tastes like salt.

‘Threaten me later,’ you mutter, pushing her to lie on her back. ‘Just because I’ve seen you come, doesn’t mean I’m not scared as shit of you, Carol. Now, get on your back so I can return the fucking favour, huh?’


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so there’s no smut in this chapter, but i am setting up for the smut of next chapter ;)))))) i hope you guys like and thank u for being so gr8! oxoxoxo

‘Jones’.

You were making your way toward your cell after a shower, your hair still damp and your cheeks flushed from the overly hot water. You were fucking exhausted, having not slept a fucking wink after Hellman had ordered Carol to leave your bunk. He had, you noticed, checked to see you if you were alive, before giving your form a lingering once-over.

You were pretty used to passing Carol’s table and conditioning yourself to not even bother looking her way. Beyond closed doors, you two scarcely spoke or made eye contact. It was her most prized rule; you were hers, but no one could no. Hers. Her bitch. How did being in prison make that seem so normal?

You stop and turn, wondering if you had misheard. From the way she stares at you, expression blank and a dozen cards balanced between her fingers. Fingers which had been knuckle deep inside of you last night. Looking at her now, her shoulders straight and her head slightly tilted, it was hard to imagine her like that. You swallow and turn toward where her, Johnson and two others sit. These, you knew, were the women she kept the closest to her.

You keep your expression neutral and reply, ‘Yes, Carol?’

She considers you with an ever-amused look, a feat considering she hardly changes her expression. You notice how no one who mills around the tabled area goes within three feet of Carol’s table. ‘You ever played Bridge before?’

What the hell is she doing, you wonder. You look quickly at the staring three women, before shaking your head. ‘Not since I was a kid,’ you answer shortly, knowing where this was going. You feel a curl of dread inside of you, and wonder if anyone had, somehow, seen you two together.

‘Huh,’ Carol says, and her eyebrows raise quickly. ‘Well,’ she drawls, staring hard at you without blinking once. You swallow, feeling like a fucking idiot as you stand in front of the table with your damp hair curling. ‘Sit down’.

You feel very much like you’re fucking glitching for about two seconds, before Johnson raises a pointed eyebrow at you and you shrug, agree, and throw Carol a conspicuously befuddled look, to which she entirely ignored as she roughly pulls out the chair between Johnson and herself.

You breathe in deeply, wondering if this is a test, and sit next to the most feared woman in C-Block, the one who you had make come twice last night and watched as that stony face melted into one of ecstasy.

You sit, nod to the other women, and Carol merely says, ‘Watch’.

You do, and avidly pay attention, knowing that this was a fucking honour in C-Block. Carol playing Bridge was a sacred act, something that not even Badison could be involved in. You watch the ladies talk amongst themselves; these seasoned inmates. You realise quickly that Carol and the taller of older of the two ladies, who you found was called Rivera, were the best players.

You peer at each of them, taking in their poker faces and their shifty looks, and figure that this is a game for liars.

You are stiff, and even more stiff when you peer only wants to your right, where Carol sits, to see her already eyeing you from behind her glasses with an amused look. You scowl and look away quickly, nearly jumping out of your fucking skin when you feel her left-hand dip underneath the table and grab sharply at your knee.

By the time Johnson opens the bidding (you will only half sure what the fuck that meant), Carol’s hand is back on her deck of cards and you’re left with hot cheeks and nails digging into your palms.

You’ve literally had your fingers inside of her. Why does one touch make you feel like a walking hot flush? Carol continues to mutter as cards are laid out and jokes are thrown across the table, until she says a question that you are sure can only be directed at you.

‘So, Jones,’ she muses, eyes never leaving her cards. ‘How’d you kill those two guys?’

The game carries on, slow and quiet, but you are more than aware of the four sets of eyes that flit to your every so often. Of course, she wants to know that, you think bitterly. You bite you tongue and hold back a biting remark, knowing that you were going to have to answer. In public, there was no room your sass with Carol. You don’t bother holding off you answer. You’d rehearsed it enough times in court.

‘I cut their stomach open,’ you state blandly, staring at the centre of the table, between the four sets of cards laid on. Carol scoffs.

‘No shit,’ she snaps. You refrain from breathing in too sharply in annoyance. ‘Gotta have been some planning, right? Bet they were sceamin’, and yet you managed to finish the job without anyone interrupting you. How’d that work?’

The other ladies remain quiet. You guess that Caro had interrogated a lot of people in front of them. Still…you couldn’t help but feel like she was kind of getting off on these details; on making you squirm. You purse your lips, before turning fully to her with a flip of your thick curly hair. ‘I knocked on their door. They lived in a flat in the shitty side of the City. I pretended to be there neighbour and dressed up super nice for them’. Her eyebrow quirks at that, and you refrain from smirking. ‘I said I needed milk and they fuckin’ tripped over themselves to let me in. When they offered me a drink of fucking Coors, I slipped a something into their drinks, tied them up and taped up their mouths and waited until they woke up’.

You snap your mouth shut and cock a brow, knowing that this was hardly the worst thing that these women had heard. Hell, they had probably done worse. ‘…And?’ Carol inquires, her top lip settling into a please little sneer and maybe you’re the only one that hears the breathless hum to her voice.

You tilt you chin higher and look this bloody-thirsty woman dead in the eye. ‘And then I chopped their dicks off, sliced between their fingers, and cut them from navel to neck’. And felt what the insides of a human feels like, whilst warm and fresh.

Carol stares for just a moment, before shaking her head and smirking with a small chuckle. ‘Well, shit, girlie,’ she says, and you think that you much prefer it when she is saying your first name. Girlie felt horrible coming, being aimed at you. ‘That’s a fucking riot’.

You manage a small smile at that, as Johnson says thoughtfully, ‘Always wanted to cut a man’s dick off. Good on ya, Curls’.

‘Adelaide,’ Carol says suddenly, turning toward the unnamed woman of the table. She straightens up and snaps her gaze away from you and instead to Carol, her back straightening and her eyes widening. ‘Go tell the twins I want my slot for tomorrow in an hour instead. Now,’ she stresses, when the mousy-haired woman with a tattoo of an eel spiralling down her arm hesitates for just a moment. As she stands with a put-off expression, Carol turns toward you and quirks a brow. ‘Take her place, Jones,’ she says, and you know full well it’s an order.

You do, sliding between Johnson and Rivera with clammy hands and a tight throat. You play one game of Bridge, of which you lose, and Carol eyes you with blue eyes and a thoughtful expression. ‘You play shit, Jones,’ she tells you, and Johnson snorts. ‘But I’ve seen shitter’.

Be still my beating heart, you think wryly.

-

You sit in your cell with Johnson, and offer her a torn of piece of your Snickers bar. She’s sitting on the metal toilet doing a piss, but she takes it all the same as you chew thoughtfully, eyeing the crack above her head on the wall.

‘Were you here when Carol and Barb first arrived?’ you inquire, and Johnson doesn’t look at all surprised by the inquiry. You suppose most people got asked this question by newbies, not that you were a newbie anymore.

Johnson wipes and stands and tugs up her trousers, before flushing. She turns to you with a sigh, still chewing the last piece of chocolate that you had given her. ‘Been here a full year by the time they got here. Shook things right up. You think Carol’s scary as shit? You ain’t sees good ol’ Babs. Bitch is a fuckin’ pill-head from what I hear these days. Used to be pretty, too. Fucked her teeth right the fuck up,’ she adds, and licks her hand before shoving back a piece of stray hair.

I try not to think about the fact that she had not washed her hands,

You hum and crinkle your wrapper, aiming it for the toilet bowl. You lean on your knees and swing your legs off the side of the bed. ‘Hm,’ you grunt. ‘Can’t imagine her as anything but a terrifying middle-aged woman’. And yet, you wanna bang the brains out of that middle-aged woman, you think bitterly.

Johnson cocks a brow, probably thinking the same thing, before glances toward the open cell and leans in a little closer to you. ‘You ask anyone who was around back then – hell, they probably would be too fuckin’ scared to say – but if you think Carol is so scary now, Curls, you be glad you didn’t know her when she was a mean ol’ teen’.

You blink up at her, mulling those over and thinking of a young, even more unhinged Carol. Maybe Johnson was right.

‘Anyhow,’ sighs the lady. ‘I need a shit, so scram. Don’t look at me like that – the fuck you think she booked a sudden damn appointment with the twins?’

Oh. You stand and feel oddly uncomfortable, now that Johnson was admitting she knew of your fuck fest with Carol. ‘You think I’m a little bitch for going?’ you ask, chin held high and no ounce of shame in your voice.

Johnson snorts, something of which she did quite often. ‘I think Carol is the pickiest damn lady I ever did know, but I respect her. The fact she’s letting you stick it to her, well…Take that how you will, Curls. Now, fuck off, or I’ll start doing a dump right in front of you-’

‘Jesus fuck, I’m going’.

-

You walk past the twins, who already stand in the hallway, and note the half-amused expressions on their faces. You realise only then that they must think you’ve fucked up colossally – why else would Carol want to see you twice in a row? Keeping this in mind, you play along and tighten your jaw and cast a worried eye toward the salon doorway. You wondered what the CO’s must think when they see the salon being guarded, knowing it was Carol’s area. Did they care, or did they choose to turn a blind eye?

Idiots. No wonder so many people got fucked up in this place.

You stop in your tracks when you enter the room and see Carol with her short sleeves rolled up (and, oh shit, your bisexual heart does the fucking salsa), her hair pushed over one shoulder, and a lollipop shoved in her mouth. She’s sitting on the chair where the mirrors are, balancing a deck of cards between her fingers as she expertly shuffles them.

She shuffles the lollipop in her mouth when you walk in, offering you her usual quirking eyebrow and tilt of her head. ‘You’re shit at Bridge,’ she informs you, quite factually. ‘If you’re gonna join me and my girls from time to time, you’ve gotta stop losin’ like a little bitch, Jones’.

‘It was my first time,’ you defend grumpily, stepping into the room.

‘Thought said you’d played before?’ she asks, around a mouthful of lollipop.

You shrug. ‘I lied’.

Carol scoffs, before uncrossing her legs and patting her thigh. ‘Now, sit, and I’ll show you how to fuckin’ play Bridge, huh?’


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there is smut, just at the end! i wanted to make you all wait bc i’m evil lmao. a bit of jones/carol interaction, and the usual carol being an aggressive princess :) enjoy, my gaybies!

‘Ow!’

‘Quit fuckin’ up, then I won’t have to punish you, Jones’.

You scowl into the mirror at her, to which she merely cocks a brow over your shoulder. You had been with her for ten minutes so far, your behind balanced on her slim thighs. You had been unsure at first about whether she had been fucking joking, but her rough fingers dragging you onto her lap was all the assurance you needed.

You rub the stinging skin through your prison trousers, from where Carol had harshly pinched you. She wasn’t gentle about it, but was she with anything? She digs her nails in so hard to your skin that you were sure you were going to have tiny little bruises dotted there by the end of the day.

You had an hour, she had told you, and you were half-put off and half-excited that she was wasting it with how to teach you some fucking boring card game. You wouldn’t dare say this, though. Carol, you had come to realised, really fucking liked Bridge.

‘This card, right?’ you drag the card toward you two and stiffen when she reaches forward to nab the card and scoff. You fucking wait for the pinch with a stiff back, as she holds the card between her forefinger and thumb in front of you.

‘Not such a retard then, huh?’ she murmurs, before slapping the card noisily back onto the counter and reaching round to rest her hand on your thigh. You swallow when she taps her fingers there, before looking at her curiously in the mirror. She tilts her head. ‘You fuckin’ see something you like, douchebag? Carry on, Jones. Shit’.

You refrain from rolling your eyes and recount what you should do next with your mouth twisted into a frown. She pinches you on the other side when you get it wrong, with the hand that was not on your thigh, and you hiss through your teeth and grit out another answer. At that, the fingers resting on you slip up, toward the top of your thighs, and squeeze ever so gently there.

Oh, you realise. This is some punishment/reward bullshit.

Every time you see Carol, and every time you have a little rendezvous like this, you begin to slowly test the barriers of which she holds up. There are certain things you can say that you are sure others cannot, but you are also aware that talking about her sister was a big no-no. Part of you wants to understand the is and outs of this enigmatic woman, but another part of you is terrified that you might be horrified by what you find. A bigger part of you is shit-scared that you will not.

But still, the physical barriers are the ones that need to break down first. You’re more than aware that it was sometimes easier to fuck someone than to fucking lean on then so, of course, you decide to do just fucking that. You inch back on her lap, your curves rubbing against her slim build as you lean against her chest; the utter picture of innocence as you lean forward to run your fingers over the cards.

The fingers resting at the top of your thigh twitch.

‘If I did this and the person after me didn’t have the same card, would they say void, and then they can play any card?’

‘Smart cookie’.

‘Fuck off,’ you scoff.

She pinches you and you hiss in pain, before rolling your shoulders and spinning a little in her lap, so that you’re now across her legs. You don’t miss the way her hands glide with you, not subtle at all, to maintain some ounce of control. You cock a brow when you face her stoic face. ‘I think I know how to play Bridge now, Carol’.

She twitches her head in mock interest. ‘Ya think?’

You frown, and dare to take a step forward, metaphorically. You eye her, noting the annoyed twitch in her brow and your unwavering stare, and the wrinkling of her thin lips. Your hands, which rest on your lap, raise slowly, just in case she has something hidden somewhere that she can slice you in warning with. ‘Can I take off your glasses?’ you inquire, knowing full well that permission could make all the difference.

She rolls her eyes sky fucking high and digs her nails in your thighs, keeping you in place even though you had no intention of going anywhere. ‘The fuck you wanna do that for?’ You continue to stare pointedly, to which she shrugs lazily and sighs heavily. ‘What-fucking-ever, Rianne’.

You grin far bigger than you usually would (somehow, in here, you felt hidden from the rest of the prison, a place where smiles and laughter were weakness), and you do not miss the slight twitch in Carol’s eyes as her gaze flicks only briefly to your spread lips. You reach up, your fingers curling around the glasses that were such a novelty to you. You wondered if she’d had them since coming here – she could not have possibly chosen this design recently.

You tug them off, and you suddenly feel fucking awkward.

She looks somehow different. It’s only when the glasses are inches from her face and she is blinking at you, entirely bored looking and exasperated, that you consider the fact that Carol is pretty and fair. Prison has made her mouth tight and her forehead creased, but she has pale skin, long fair eyelashes, blue eyes, and high cheekbones. The glasses, you realise, are her trademark. They’re something so fucking stupid looking that she has balls for rocking them so well.

You laugh, then.

You choke on said laugh when Carol’s hand flies up to tug at your hair in a way that leaves pleasant behind and is instead full-fledged, eye-watering sting. You yelp and whack your foot against her calve in surprise, and nearly topple off her lap at the force of it.

‘Something fucking funny?’ she mutters, forcing you to look at her with your head dipped at an awkward angle.

You glare at her, annoyed and bemused. ‘I was laughing because I think you’re fucking pretty, Carol. Not a word I would associate with you. Maybe terrifying, foreboding…ominous,’ you grumble, when you pull your head from her hair when her fingers unexpectantly loosen. ‘Fucking hell…I’m not going to have any hair left by the time you’re finished with me’.

‘Fuck pretty,’ she snaps, eyeing you after a short few seconds of staring as you rub your head. ‘I’ve got power. That’s what really fucking matters in this place’.

‘Fuck pretty?’ you scoff, still balancing her glasses in your fingers. ‘Isn’t that why you harassed me in the first place, Miss Shallow? I-’

She snorts noisily, tutting as if you are the stupidest thing in the world. ‘You think I don’t have dozens of pretty bitches in here who would kill each other to get in my good graces and make me come like a King? Of fucking course. No…you’re better than them, aren’t you, Jones? Who the fuck else would I let talk to me like you do, or fuck me like you do?’

You swallow, well and truly baffled and speechless. ‘Oh,’ you reply, rather intelligently. You scramble for something to fill the silence with and drag that cocky look off Carol’s cruel face, so you instead fumble to place the glasses carefully back on the older woman’s face, your fingers skimming her cheekbones as you do.

There is the briefest of moments in which you look at her and she looks at you. You think, maybe for the millionth time, what kissing her would feel like. But…nah. Carol did not kiss. Carol fucked and locked and bit and assured you were worth picking, but only because she was Carol fucking Denning. You were more than aware that it was more arrogance than a compliment to you.

Your heart drops out of your fucking ass when her gaze flicks for the second time that day down to your lips.

She moves like a lithe, but brutal snake, suddenly grabbing you by the thighs and righting you in her lap as she slams your back against her chest. ‘Be fuckin’ quiet,’ she mutters into your ear, as you go to snap at her. ‘Spent most the damn time talkin’, and I still owe you from last night, hm? You gave me two, I gave you one’.

You are about to mutter a sly comment back, but she is already sliding one hand around your waist and then other is palming its way into your underwear with vigour and fingers pointing south. You gasp in surprise, still not entirely used to her rough ways, and lean further back into the curve of her chest.

She makes you wet quickly, which you consider a God fucking given talent. You brace yourself on her spread knees and, fuck, why did her sitting like that make you want to grind yourself into her like the little bitch she considered you to be? But do you do just that? Of fucking course. You tilt you head back so that the side of your head brushes her cheeks, and you curve yourself so that your ass presses into the warmth between her legs.

‘Fuckin’ tease,’ she mutters roughly, and you have to cover your own mouth when she slides the arm wrapped around your waist to grab roughly at your chest, her fingers spread as she palmed at you with teeth grazing your ear and warmth breath dampening your hair.

‘Shit, Carol,’ you mutter, and the sound is mortifying to your own ears, but you can’t bring yourself to care.

She presses harder against your clit, until she slides her palm down and her fingers, to your utter fucking delight and star-stricken pleasure, slide inside of you with her cold palm rutting against the overly sensitive and wet bundle of nerves. She cups you there, seemingly touching every area of your pussy with thin and lithe fingers and palm moving with every thrust and her other hand yanking and massaging and at your tit and her body moving with yours as you grind up into her hand and-

‘You’re so fuckin’ pretty when you come’.

You arch, and the orgasm that hits you is long and slow as she thrusts in and out of you, her pace slowing down as if to elongate the experience, and you’re half-embarrassed to find your body involuntary twitch in her lap as your slam a hand over your mouth and Carol, you are half aware, licks the sweat from the back of your neck.

‘Jesus,’ you laugh, hardly even noticing that she was entirely allowing you to curl back into her chest, her hand still down your trousers and her hair mingling with yours. ‘You sure you don’t like pussy?’

‘Only yours,’ she mutters, a trace of amusement in her voice. ‘Other than that, Burt Reynolds is the fucking shit’.

‘Oh God, do not make me think about Burt fucking Reynolds when I’m still half coming, Carol,’ you mutter, breathless and sweaty and, God, her fingers were still inside of you.

‘You shut your fucking mouth’.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a small remidner that this is my last chapter until tuesday!! i really hope you guys like it!! ily alllllll xx

It becomes abundantly apparent that Carol is more than willing to spend time with you. If she was an entirely different person, you might even say that she liked to spend time with you.

You find yourself playing Bridge twice that week, but only when Johnson, Rivera and Adelaide are present. They are her closest; her most trusted. You sometimes see Badison, the fucking weirdo, shooting looks over to the table whenever she passes. You don’t want to play Bridge more than those two days, and Carol does not ask you to.

You understand what being seen with Carol entails. It entails others knowing that you are loyal to her (are you? You couldn’t care less about her fucking feud with her fucked up sister), that you have something worthwhile, and that you are an enemy of D-Block. Being in C-Block already made them hate you, but being known to be just a tiny bit within Carol’s circle…

It was dangerous.

CO Stefanovic stands to your right, as you balance to black phone between your shoulder and ear and listen to your little sister’s words. Around you, you hear sniffles, the usual sound from the call room. As you lean against the small wall guarding your privacy, you frown at your sister’s words.

‘Mom said they’re going to go for surgery to remove the lump. She might even get a mastectomy – is that what it’s called? They’ll remove her boob-’ She cuts herself off with a shaken sigh and small sniff. ‘She’s going to be okay’.

You’re not whether it’s a question or a statement, so you reply. ‘She is, dude. You know she will. It’s mom’.

‘I wish you were her. I’m sorry-’

‘What have I told you about saying sorry?’ you snap, though not unkindly. The CO walks around, his eyes jumping from inmates to inmate, and you turn away from him. ‘I made the choice, Lils. I did what I did. It is not your fault’.

She pauses, and you know she will not take this answer. Lily was young and kind, but had a temper like you. Sometimes, you worried that she might have something like you inside of her; a lack of empathy toward those you deemed unworthy of it. ‘Okay, Ri’.

‘Okay,’ you nod. ‘I’m going to have to go, Lil. The CO’s telling us. I love you, okay?’

‘I love you, too’.

-

Love.

You walk out into the yard and think about it. You loved your sister, you knew. You loved your parents. You loved reading and you loved Vanilla Coke and you loved the smell of cut grass. You loved a lot of things; things you kept close to you and away from the staleness of prison.

You didn’t want to taint the idea of them.

You feel angry, more than anything, at what Lily had told you. Mom was hurting, and you were in here. Why could the jury not see why you had done what you had done? (Because you didn’t just kill those men, you slaughtered them). You would not see Lily graduate, or meet her first love, or talk to her about her first time. She would grow and change, and you would be in here.

You could not even think of the things you yourself would miss out on. Prison would be your life for the next twenty-five years. That was that, and there was no point in dwelling on missed lovers and careers and a life of making a difference.

You are pulled from your thoughts when someone smacks into your side, their back turned to you and their navy uniform making you narrow your gaze. They half-turn, mid-laugh at whatever the group of Dick-Block inmates they were with were talking about, before narrowing their gaze at you.

‘Watch where you’re fuckin’ goin’, Cunt-Block,’ she sneers, all shaven head and massive overbite and face tattoo.

You’d had your fair share of needless, stupid aggression in Max. I the first few weeks, Badison and her fuck-wits had throw insults at your quietness and tugged at your curls like fucking school children. You were also very sure there had been piss in your toothpaste, before you had chucked it away. You held back, though. You always held back.

Today was different. Today you were tired, your hormones were whack from coming off your period, and you had lost the game of Bridge the other day so miserably that Carol had side-eyed you in an annoying as fuck manner. ‘Maybe you should learn to walk straight, you fucking inbred,’ you snap quietly, your level gaze watching as her face flushes and her friends stand back, expecting a fight.

You almost want one. You don’t care how many shots you get for hitting the Nazi with a quick punch, but you’re being shoved out of the way by Badison before you can so much as take a step toward the shaven haired woman.

Badison sneers at you, steps in front of you, and mutters, ‘You must be bringin’ in some good shit if Carol don’t want you getting your ass kicked, Curly,’ with a toothy, snaggle toothed grin, before she turns to the seething nazi and says, ‘You lookin’ at somethin’, D-Block trash?’

You miss the end of the conversation and turn away with an angry huff of breath and a pointed glare at the ground. You don’t bother looking for where Carol surely stands, decked out in her beanie and tan coat. You don’t see if the CO’s are looking. You don’t even check to see if any D-Blockers are gonna go for you, not that you’re away from lapdog Badison.

You storm toward the building, slip past the inmates who were not aware of the exchange, and wait for CO Hellman, who sneers at you, to allow you back into Max. You move, not entirely sure where you’re going, but knowing full well that you needed to punch your fucking pillow until you felt a lot less like a whistling kettle.

Prison held bad days. This was one of them.

You almost stop walking when you hear Hellman mutter, ‘Didn’t expect to see you coming in so soon, Carol. Thought stone cold bitches like you liked the cold?’ You don’t know why you end up walking faster. Perhaps it’s your need to fuck someone off just as much as you were. Perhaps you want Carol to chase you, because you’re a fucking attention seeker when it comes to her. Perhaps you want her to punish you.

You want a lot of things.

You yank your hair over your shoulder and turn away from where you know the locked salon is, instead aiming for a place you knew you would have some privacy. Carol ruled the fucking roost, and if Hellman knew she was going to sneak somewhere, he wouldn’t give a shit.

Her footsteps squeak behind you, and your stomach twists with anticipation. You know she will have seen your beef with the nazi, would she care? Jesus – beef. Your vocabulary was fucking suffering in here.

You’re three feet from the storage cupboard, one of the first places this thing began, when she pushes you forward at the back of your neck, yanks open the door, and shoves you into the closet with an annoyed hiss and a, ‘Fuckin’ get in there’.

You do something you hadn’t done before, the moment you stumble into the closet. You yank yourself away from her with more force than before, and turn toward the woman with a glower and hot cheeks. She eyes you with that oddly calm gaze, her thin wrist flopping as she drops her hand from the door knob, when said doors clicks shut behind you both. You stare at her, chest heaving and jaw tight.

Carol takes a step forward. ‘What the fuck were doing antagonizing that D-Block skinhead?’ she mutters, slowly reaching up to pull the beanie from her head. You continue to stare defiantly, your back to where the brooms hung from the wall. ‘You trying to drag attention to yourself, you fuckin’ moron - you trying to make trouble for me?’

‘You care if I get fucked up by you sister’s block, Carol?’ You tilt you head and smile sardonically. ‘How sweet-’

You knew she was a short fuse, so the moment she steps forward and pushes you against the wall by your shoulders, you’re not surprised. The brooms whack into your head and you wince, staring up at her through your lashes and swallowing. Carol, in return, lifts her top lip in displeasure and curls her fingers tightly against the top of your shoulder. She pushes you harder. ‘The fuck is with the attitude today, Jones?’

You try not laugh, really, but she is just…utterly mad. ‘I told you last week my mom has fucking cancer – what the fuck do you think it is, Carol? Right, right – I shouldn’t expect any understanding of basic human emotion from the woman who drowned her little sister-’ The feel of her fist hitting your stomach knocks the wind out of you. She considers you with a level look as you recover, her brow cocked and her expression disinterested.

‘And you sliced some people open – guess we’re even, huh-?’ You launch at her, suddenly more pissed than you had been when that inmate had backed into you. You growl and reach with clawed fingers to her thick hair and yank so hard that she yells in pain – and it is a sound that is music to your fucking ears.

You wonder if she’ll kill you for this.

She is a sneering, angry mess as she scratches your fingers from her hair and slams your hand against the wall, her foot stomping so heavily on yours that you wonder if she’s broken one of your smaller toes. You struggle, if only for a moment, and blow your hair back from your face as you gaze up at her, your eyes stinging and your chest heaving.

Carol, in return, is equally as rumpled. She plants you against the wall, her hair a disarray and her mouth hanging open as she sucks in deep breaths. You note the disdainful look on her face; you know you’ve gone too far, that she’ll hurt you for this, that you’ve fucked up what little trust she had in you, that-

‘Maybe if you fuckin’ tell me you’re still weepin’ about your damn mom, you fuckin’ brat. Carin’ is a fuckin’ weakness, and you’re the example, but I’ll be a little nicer to you - maybe,’ she mutters. Your fingers creak and crack with how hard she presses them against the wall, and you breathe in her warm breath. Some of the anger wilts, and is instead replaced by utter defeat.

You wonder if anyone else has ever got away with touching Carol like that.

You swallow, realise that you are on the brink of tearing up, and suddenly wish, for once, that you were anywhere but near this woman. ‘Right,’ you reply, voice cracking.

She studies you, like a kid playing with an insect, and you look right back. She is a towering entity, Carol. An elastic band that is always ready to snap. Right now, you have no idea which way this situation could go. She stares for a few more moments, before rolling her eyes and sighing like a fucking moody teenager, before saying in the least sorry way possible, ‘I’m fuckin’ sorry your mom got cancer, Rianne’. You, honestly, shocked. Had the bitter woman ever said sorry before? ‘Now will you stop fuckin’ around with D-Block and moping around like someone stole your shittin’ commissary-’

You kiss her. It is perhaps the first time you successfully shut her up.

It is a closed mouthed kiss, and you find that her lips are dry and thin, and she stiffens, as if this is something entirely new to her. You close your eyes tightly, just waiting for the moment the shiv cuts through the skin on your stomach when one of her hands retracts from holding yours to the wall-

And then she is holding you by your hair, and her mouth is opening yours.

You sigh in a mix between relief and fear when her fingers dig into yours and her nose brushes against your own, and you all but melt into a puddle on the ground when she leans in further, into this slow, odd kiss, and her tongue brushes against yours.

It is all oddly tentative. You think you might laugh.

Your heart hammers so hard in your chest, you wonder if she can hear it. Carol shifts, her foot lifting from yours and settling half between yours legs, and you’re only kid of aware when the kiss turns from something slow and experimental, to hot breath and the both of you blinking lazily at each other with lingering lips.

You wonder why it took you so long to just fucking kiss her, because Carol Denning tastes like the inside of a fucking Care Bear; all sugar and syrup and strawberry Razz.

She is, of course, the first to bite your lip and surge in for a harder kiss, her hand lowering from your hair and instead to your waist with bruising fingers, whilst you go about pulling your hand from hers on the wall and burying your fingers in her greying, thick hair. You feel, for just one moment, an equal in this encounter. You move in unison, the two of you, pulling at body parts and digging fingers into curves and biting at lips.

You breathe in a moan and she pulls away, before planting a sharp bite to the curve of your jaw and pushing you up the wall with her fingers sharp against your ass. You allow her to, your eyes heavy and your chest tight as she pinches so hard at the skin of your jaw that you yelp.

You shove your knee between hers, and hers between yours.

It is only after a few seconds of her quick, angry kisses and rubbing against each other, that you realise you’re dry humping like a bloody sixteen-year-old.

…But why is it so hot?

Your back bangs into the wall as her sharp knee rubs against you, and you try your fucking hardest to concentrate enough to give her the same friction. You feel beyond turned on; beyond knowing what the fuck is going on…but Carol is fucking you right back. She is all clashing teeth and hard hands against your thighs as she holds you in place, her body trying to reach that peak along with you as her warmth hits your thigh from where she rubs herself.

You are, you know, in awe of her.

You breathe in the warmth from her mouth and bring both hands to rest on her jaw as you kiss her with as much vigour as you can, and you feel…you feel like you’re sharing something right now. You’re both wanting to come. You’re both in this, and it is different from before.

Carol looks at you when you pull away, and her heave in gasps as she pushes harder against you, her lip quirking into a please, cocky little smirk when you gasp and scramble to stay upright, the pleasure knocking you sideways and making your fingers retract against her jaw. 

With her mouth on yours, you feel as if you have Carol Denning in a place where no one else has had before.

You lick her teeth and hold her jaw, only pulling away to stare breathlessly at the stained ceiling as you move quickly with each other and, fuck, it was going to be over so soon. Who knew something as simple as a kiss could make you a fucking shaking mess of coming far too soon-

‘Jesus,’ Carol mutters, suddenly burying her head in your shoulder and letting out a shuddering breath. She pulls your close to her, and your thigh presses hotly between her legs and she juts her knee forward sharply against you. ‘Rianne’.

Her breath is like the opposite of a prayer on her tongue; it a filthy word from an evil woman, a woman who was dragging you right into Hell with her. You crumble with your name on her tongue and her mouth pressing quickly to yours, swallowing your pathetic little mewls.

She comes with your hand pulling at her hair and a string of expletives tumbling like water from her mouth, which was still just brushing over yours.You taste her words and you know that you both loathe and like this woman, more so than you should.

You pull away from each other after a full minute of her breathing against your shoulder and your sighs filling the closet. You hold her up and she holds you, before her sneakers are dragging her away. She eyes you, flushed and oddly stoic, and you struggle to stand and throw her the same look. You assume you must look like a hot fucking mess.

She stares at you with an expression you have no seen before. It is anger and worry and confusion and pissed off rage and-

You hate the silence. You hate the way she stares, almost angry, with her hair a mess and her glasses steamed up and her mouth red from your kisses. ‘You taste like those fucking lollipops,’ you tell her, wanting so desperately for it not to be quiet as you force yourself to look away from the wet patch at the top of her knee. You wonder if she’ll kill you, not she is has fucked you. ‘You-’

‘Shut the fuck up, Rianne’. She cuts you off with a step forward, a sharp yank of your hair, and a biting kiss to your mouth.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey, i’m back! so i’m going to write the next part of this now, so it should be posted later this evening. there is no smut in this part, but next part there will be! i hope i’m giving carol the realistic opening up to jones that i want, and don’t be afraid to disagree with me! i do use the suggestion from @androdad to use maniac (song, obvs) somewhere, and although it’s only brief in this chapter, it is carried out in the next one! i hope you enjoy, thank you for all being so patient!

You only realise this the next morning, as you’re eating whatever lump of shit they had given you for breakfast, and you feel a constant stinging throb at the tip of your tongue. Never mind the nips at the base of your throat that merely looked like fucking gnat bites, but your tongue? You hadn’t even noticed at the time, too caught up in the fact that you had shouted at her, pushed her and kissed her, and yet Carol Denning still had not straight up murdered you.

You were caught in wondering if you were lucky or unlucky, still biting carefully at the brown mush on your tray, when a fight at the other end of the hall as two CO’s dragging the screaming women from the Mess Hall. You didn’t even see Hernandez sit opposite you.

You had been sitting with Larsen before she had left to go back to her cell; you’d had a small catch-up with your old bunk-mate. Turns out, she was getting out a month earlier than before, and you were genuinely pleased for. Larsen was nice, albeit a sarcastic fuck.

You snap your mouth shut and glance quickly around you as Hernandez slides into the seat opposite you, her brown curls a little bit longer than last time you had seen her, but her cheeky smile still all the same. She plonks her tray onto the table as you see Carol, far away and with her back to your table. You sigh in relief.

‘Y’know,’ Hernandez drawls, drawing your attention quickly back to her. ‘If you were fucking someone else, y’could have said, rather than just ignoring me,’ she quirks a half-grin, to show you that there were no hard feelings, and your mouth struggles to work for a moment. Jesus, what was wrong with you this morning?

‘Er, what?’ you all but croak.

Hernandez, slick and smooth, squints at you with a funny smile and replies, far more coherently than you, ‘I know a hickey when I see one, Jones. No matter how much you’re trying to hide them. Y’know, get some coffee and water to make some foundation – my Mom showed me that shit before I came in here’.

You store this information. ‘Oh. Shit. Thanks’. You offer the smallest smile, still half-conscious that Carol or any of her C-Block posse might see you. You hated it – hated that you couldn’t talk to Hernandez. She was close to your age and fucking nice; you weren’t going to fuck her…not now. Not with Carol letting you push her up against walls and kiss her stupid.

Hernandez waves a hand. ‘It’s cool. Anyway, who is it? Johnson? Not my type, but I get it. Bitch would ruin you-’

‘Jesus!’ you yelp, half laughing, and half horrified at the idea. ‘Fuck no-’

‘Ah,’ Hernandez smiles, waving her plastic fork at you. ‘So, you are letting someone stick it to you – go on, I’m bored as shit and-’

You bolt up and fake a short laugh, your tray balanced in your hand. ‘In your fucking dreams, Hernandez. Can’t a woman have some secrets in this place, huh?’ She laughs a little at that, before throwing you a look that says fair enough. ‘I need to shower, anyway. Best to go before the after-breakfast rush. I’ll see you later, yeah?’ You smile stiffly, before turning away and dumping your tray on the way to the showers.

You don’t miss the sigh of Johnson standing from Carol’s table as you leave.

-

You used to love showers before prison.

You’d shave and lather yourself in the moisturising shower gel, before slapping on a hair mask and letting the hot water clean your skin. You loved to feel clean. You loved to feel fresh and new and clean yourself in the privacy of your own bathroom-

You are rinsing the cheap shampoo from your hair when you final get sick of seeing Johnsons hulking figure standing in the doorway to the showers, her arms crossed and her dry hair growing frizzy from the humidity of the room. ‘Johnson,’ you call from your stall, rubbing the suds from your face. ‘I mean this in the nicest way possible, but can you fuck off, please?’

You see the top of her head shift, and hear a low laugh. ‘Orders,’ is all she grunts, and you blink stupidly at the grimy all for a few seconds.

Oh.

Orders. Carol had mentioned before, weeks ago, that the showers were where anyone was most vulnerable, and that’s why she always had one of her girls watching with a shiv shoved into their socks just in case something happens. There had been, she told you, women in C-Block who had worked for Barb in return for drugs.

You could never be too careful.

But you? Why the fuck would anyone attack you? You were an unknown, aside from the very few games of Bridge you had played with Carol and her girls twice a week. You don’t reply to Johnson, and instead clean your most intimate areas and ponder the complexities of Carol fucking Denning.

You climb from the shower with the rough towel wrapped around you and Johnson’s harsh eye considering you. As you dry yourself, your wet curls dripping around your face, she says, ‘Should be fuckin’ thankful she didn’t see you with Hernandez, Curly. You like that girl, then best to stay far away from her. I’ve seen Carol do far worse to people for askin’ a damn favour. You…Hell, be glad she seems to like you’.

You snort. ‘I don’t think she likes me,’ you murmur, wiping your hair form your face as you tug on your shirt. You turn to Johnson, cock your head, and shrug. ‘I think she likes power, and calling me hers’.

Johnson snorts. ‘You probably ain’t wrong there, Curls. Still, ya didn’t hear it from me, but Carol’s been royally fucked over before, as y’know. Only time I ever saw her upset. Best to keep loyal and let her know you’re loyal, kid. Maybe you’ll get some in return’.

-

It had been come a kind of ritual that, when you saw Carol pass your cell with her glasses glinting in the light and her eyes darting to you, as you sit on your bunk, for you to understand the quick jut of her head to mean you should follow her.

Carol was fucking lucky. She had spent years building her own tiny Empire within C-Block, where her power made her life just that tiny bit easier. The CO’s, you know, were more lenient on her, knowing that Carol had power and that she could start a fucking riot if she wanted to. So, you know, it’s not hard for her to sneak off. And, now that you are part of her pack (kind of, somehow, a little), it’s okay for you to follow.

You follow her further this time, your sneakers squeaking against the flooring, until you reach a part of the prison you had ventured to only once. It was in your first week, when you assumed Max might provide some interesting books, only to be sorely disappointed by the shit-show library.

You lose her for a second. You stand in the doorway to the library, where the shitty, ancient computers sit unused and the lights are off. It was dead; utterly unused and desolate. You squint for a moment, your fingers flexing at your sides, until you hear a slight shuffling, of which you quickly follow. You wondered what would happen if you were caught here – was even Carol allowed in these parts of Max after the library hours stopped?

You swear and mutter as you make your way through the shelves of books, before you finally find her. She’s leaning against the wall, her arms crossed, and her leg bent and resting on the wall. She’s standing in a tiny little alcove, where remnants of a blanket, some posters, and books strewn on the floor remain. You blink at her, and she tilts her head before pulling away from the wall and considering you with one of her usual cold looks.

She doesn’t open her mouth to speak, so you step around the corner and into the hidden little place (shit, how did you not know about this place?), and say, still looking around, ‘So, you’ve got Johnson following me to the showers, now?’ She doesn’t reply, and instead throws you a cocked brow and a flat line of her mouth, as if to say yeah, so fucking what? You clock a little box on the shelf, all card and half open, and your fingers begin to reach for it as you mutter, ‘You’re talkative today…What is this place?’

She moves, then, rounding you and tittering and glancing around the tiny space with a look of utter disdain. You stop reaching for the box to stare at her. Carol, you see, was in a bitter fucking mood. ‘This,’ she spits. ‘Is where I used to deal, back when I first got here. Frieda the fuckin’ traitor and I would hang here for most of the day and rake in our fuckin’ riches – ‘till the bitch stole my shit and turned me in-’

You watch her; watch the wrinkle of her brow and the tensing of her shoulders, and feel oddly gobsmacked that she is even telling you this at all. Of course, the only thing that you can blurt out is, ‘I should have guessed. Fuckin’ Burt Reynolds’. You point to the poster behind her, to which Carol cocks a brow at you. ‘Sorry,’ you mutter, trying your best to smother your smile.

You have no idea why she’s brought you here, but after a few moments of silence you begin to let your eyes wander yet again, entirely aware of Carol’s eyes on you. You were used to such a thing, so you duck and let your fingers run along the dusty shelf, until you find the box and pull it toward you. You frown at it, at the rusted edges and the caked dust, and tuck your hair behind your ears with you free hand, before glancing at Carol.

Her face was drawn into that bitter, horrible look. ‘Was this yours?’ you inquire, to which she nods and sniffs disdainfully. ‘Oh’. You wonder if you should be respectful and put the box down, but figure this was your once chance to have a little look into Carol’s life. You flip back the lid and hum a little tune, desperate to fill the silence.

‘Don’t fuckin’ sing that,’ Carol snaps suddenly, louder than before, and you jump and nearly drop the box. She was strung tight today, and you have no fucking idea why, not why she was so against you fucking humming. What the hell had the tune even been anyway?

You shrug, before dropping to your knees and delving into the box, your fingers skimming over various pictures. ‘People got married here?’ you ask, incredulous. ‘The fucks the point? Oh – Christ, I thought our clothes were bad now-’ You see her, then. It’s among various pictures of a kick-ball match, you assume, with C-Blockers and D-Blockers playing together. The picture is of all of them, all the women, and there, at the front, is a young and pretty girl with her hair swept to the side and her face adorned by a pair of very familiar, very large glasses. The expression, you find, is as bitter as it remains to this day. You look up, see Carol eyeing you with her arms crossed, and just about stop your smile. ‘It’s you’.

She grunts, before pulling up the sleeves of her shirt and crouching beside you. It is such an odd thing for her to do, that you are momentarily thrown off. ‘And that,’ she points a neatly cut nail to a pretty girl in the D-Block colours, her hair dark and her face drawn into a hard look. ‘Is fuckin’ Barb’.

You don’t know what to say, so instead you look at her with the box balanced on your knees and your eyes unblinking, and say, ‘Her hair was fucking terrible, if that’s any consolation’.

And you could fucking clap in glee, because Carol finds that kind of funny.

You eye the picture once more, wholly aware of Carol’s warm form next to you and her judging eye, as you flick through the pictures and look at the pretty girl that was her; the girl with the same shaped face and small nose and hard lines. You run your fingers across the picture, still looking at Carol’s youthful and beautiful (beautiful? Where the fuck did that come from?) face, before squinting in bemusement at a particularly hulking figure standing on Carol’s side of the picture.

‘Is that Johnson?’ you ask, real laughter laced into your voice as your shoulders shake. ‘So, she’s always kind of looked like Andre the Giant then, huh?’

You startle and nearly topple onto the floor, sending all the contents of the box cascading, when Carol lets out a sharp bark of laughter, and when you turn to her, you see her nose scrunched up and mouth pressed into a thin line as she supresses the laughter coming from her.

You really don’t know whether to stare at her, at this terrifying sociopath of a woman, or laugh with her. You choose the prior option, simply because you don’t want to scare Carol out of laughing, nor do you want her to think you’re…well, that you’re trying to become too comfortable with her. Somehow, you think that’ll piss her off, because she’s Big Scary Carol and you’re supposed to be scared, right?

Except, you’re not anymore.

The sight of her, in those few seconds, with laughter etched onto her face and her mouth trying to hard not to split into a smile, well…it makes you feel like you’re seeing Carol Denning. You smile, noting how her laughter stops when you reach for her face and touch her jaw, and note very suddenly the warning in her eyes and the careful way in which she watches you.

‘Am I allowed to kiss you?’ you inquire.

She cocks a brow, and you see the Carol with hard lines and sharp eyes, but with just a trace of that amusement she saved for those she knew. With a cock of her head as she sits on her haunches and rests her arms across her knees, she replies, ‘You think I brought you here to take a trip down fuckin’ memory lane, Rianne?’

You snort, before your fingers splay into her hair and you kiss her, without really thinking twice if the kissing thing had been a one-time occurrence.

When she kisses you back, your question is answered.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> yooooo so i got this up super fast. follow me at caroldenningimagines and ask me shit! ly guys x

You figure she must have just had one of her lollipops, because her mouth tastes like the sweets she gifted you every night. She is in charge immediately, and she wastes no time in dragging you back roughly with her as she leans back onto the wall, her legs going to splay out in front of her.

You pull away, your mouth warm, and tell her, ‘You mind not biting my fucking tongue this time?’ She stares at you, brow cocked and mouth wet, before she curls her hand around the neck of your shirt, yanks you forward, and forces your mouth open with a wet and toothy kiss, her hand drawing you to crawl onto her lap. You know what’s coming, and you don’t really know why you let her draw your tongue with hers and give the end a mighty nip.

You yelp and knock your face away from hers, your cheeks red and your eyes narrowed. Carol’s hand, you see, is still grappling at your shirt. ‘Maybe don’t tell me what to fuckin’ do,’ she bites out, before pulling you back so that your mouth moves with hers once again.

You realise, as your hands find her waist and you dare to touch her sides, you’re not so scared anymore. You’re not worrying about what will happen if you touch her in a certain place, or if you snap a sarcastic remark at her. You realise, with the feeling of your stomach falling, that you’re becoming familiar with her. You’re beginning to understand her mannerisms and her fucked up sense of humour – you’re becoming attached.

Fuck it.

You shove a hand down her trousers, your legs either side of her thighs and her fist still dragging you close to her. You waste no time in finding her warmth; your fingers press quickly, trying desperately to make your mind so clouded with wanting to fuck that your other thoughts will be banished from your mind. Carol breathes sharply into your mouth, and her hand moves roughly from your shirt and to your hair, until she is yanking quickly there.

Your fingers find the bundle of nerves, because you know she prefers attention to her clit rather than you shoving your fingers inside of her, and you work her there with you palm pressed against the surprisingly soft curls. You press against her thighs, your own stomach clenching as you lean back, your breathing coming shallower when you see her eyes are shut at her mouth is just slightly open and, fuck, you really don’t think you’ll want to fuck anyone else as much as you want to fuck her.

The moment you feel her getting wet, you dart forward to kiss the skin of her exposed neck because, fuck, when she’s like this she won’t swat you away. She swears when you suck on a particularly sensitive bit of skin, and you allow room for her to quickly slip her hand down your own uniform, her eyes slipping open only momentarily. You pull away, and her hazy glare finds you. ‘You give me a fuckin’ hickey, I’ll slice ya damn fingers off,’ she says, and fuck if her voice isn’t soft and deep and breathless as you rub her and dip your fingers back into her wetness.

Her fingers slip toward you, and you’re already wet as fuck. You grin lazily down at her, your free hand scrambling to land on the wall above her head, and reply, ‘No, you wouldn’t. You love my fingers-’ She rubs hard, her body arching with yours as she slips her fingers inside of you with no warning, and her eyes never leave yours as you pant at the feeling. You fucking ache for this woman. ‘Shit,’ you breathe, to which she smiles a cocky little smile.

Fuck that. You let your hand slide from the wall until your fingers find the knots of her hair, the both of you rocking slightly into the others working hands. You find yourself watching her face more than usual; you watch her pupils turn to the size of dinner plates, her mouth opening just slightly, her pale cheeks flush, and her tongue wet her lips when you tug just slightly at her hair. Her hand drops from your own curls, and you all but come all over her hand when her fingers suddenly find your round behind, and her nails dig painfully into the skin there. ‘You fuckin’ like that?’ she inquires roughly but quietly, her head inclined toward you as she breathes hotly against your mouth. You nod, half-forgetting how to use your fingers properly against her, her own working in and out of you quickly, her palm pressing so hard against your clit that you’re about to see stars-

It is then that you both hear the clatter of someone entering the room, and their off-tune singing. Carol slams a hand against your mouth, and her fingers stop inside of you. You, in return, tug her hair hard from jumping, and wince when she glares hotly at you.

You both listen, stiff and staring at each other (you with wide eyes, and Carol with a stern glare), until you hear whoever it is begin sweeping. You think quickly, eyes scanning the area around you as Carol holds you in place. It didn’t look like they cleaned around here – you would maybe be safe.

With that in mind, you waste zero fucking time in giving the palm of Carol’s hand a swift lick (entirely disregarding the utterly repulsed looks she gives you, despite the other places said tongue has been), and swirling your fingers oh-so slowly against her once again. You stare at her, your hips thrusting a little against her fingers as whoever was sweeping the floor and singing bangs into a bookshelf and swears.

Carol looks right about ready to murder you, and you decide (even if you feel fucking stupid) to use the dirty fucking mouth that she has used on you. With your cheeks red and your fingers pausing against her, you lean a little forward, wrestle her palm from your mouth, and whisper against her ear, ‘You know, Hernandez would be more than happy to finish the job. It’s just…I’m just so wet for you, Carol. I-’

You choke on your own fucking breath when her fingers contract against your behind and her palm pushes hard against you once again. Your breath stutters against her hair, and you don’t even realise you’re half-fucking her fingers until she slides her hand from your behind and rests it at your hip and guides your moving hips.

In unison, both of your hands cover each other’s mouths. You don’t think you’ll forget the feeling of dominating her, even in just the smallest way, when you palm cuts off her little pants.

It is only up from there. You hardly notice Carol; you’re far too wrapped up in how fucking good it feels to be on top of her, her fingers so deep inside of you and her palm pressed against everything and, fuck, her mouth is open against your palm-

She scrambles for you, her hand slipping away from you mouth, and you know that she is about to come to. She yanks you forward with hair ripping from your skull, and you do just about the same to her. Your mouths collide so brutally that her glasses knock against your nose, and your teeth catch her lip. You come hard, both of you trying to keep your fingers working, as you both come undone. You kiss her with your cry captured in her mouth, and her fingers slip under your top to scratch at your back.

You both lean against each other, perhaps the only time that Carol will allow herself to be relaxed and supported by another is after she’s come, and you rest your sweaty forehead against her as you listen for the sound of the cleaner.

‘She must’ve left,’ Carol muses quietly, her glasses a little askew. ‘Good for her - would have had to given her a little incentive to keep her mouth shut’.

You nod, not sure if you’re able to speak, and slip your hand from her trousers. She does the same, before studying the slickness of her fingers in front of her face, her other hand straightening her glasses. You watch, red-faced, when she licks curiously at your wetness. ‘Oh my God,’ you mutter, still straddling her. ‘You’re to going to fucking end me’.

She shrugs, before wiping her hands on her sides and indicating for you to get off. You do, your legs just slightly wobbly from coming so hard and sitting so awkwardly for so long. You try and climb off her without falling, only to tumble to the space beside her against the wall when Carol mutters, ‘Fuckin’ hell – come here’, and all but drags you to sit close to her side, her hands at your hips.

Your bum lands with a thud, and you’re pretty sure you’re going to bruise.

Carol’s knees draw up and her legs spread, and she stretches her arms out in front of her. You look away, not used to just...sitting after you’d fucked. You tuck your hair behind your ears and clean your fingers with your trousers, before inquiring, ‘Why did you get Johnson to watch me, Carol?’

She slings her arms to rest over her slim knees, her eyes trained on the shelves in front of you. You realise how close you’re sitting, and how easily you had felt the muscles in her side tense at the question. ‘Because you’re a fuckin’ idiot, and D-Block bitches know who’s in my circle. Barb likes fucking with my things. You wanna die naked and covered in some cheap ass shampoo, Rianne?’

‘That’s exactly how I imagined going out,’ you reply seriously. ‘I don’t see you giving Badison a fucking shower bodyguard-’

She turns to look sharply at you, to which you easily catch her eye. With a slim brow raised and eyes wide, Carol snaps, ‘What have I told you about showing a little fuckin’ gratitude, Jones?’ You sigh, refrain from rolling your eyes, and mutter something akin to thanks under your breath. You do, though, blink hard at your knees when Carol drawls, ‘I don’t give a shit about Badison, anyway’.

You decide to ignore the unsaid context of that statement. There are a few moments silence, and then some rustling. You peer, only to see Carol produce two wrapped lollipops, and pass one to you. You thank her, unwrap it, and say, ‘Who said cigarettes are the only after-sex treat, huh?’

Carol snorts, before plonking the lollipop into her mouth. You watch in amusement when her cheek rounds with the shape of it. ‘I’d fuckin’ prefer one of those right now’.

You hum. ‘I could fucking kill for a Vanilla Coke’.

Carol eyes you, her head half turning. ‘That sounds fuckin’ disgusting,’ she deadpans.

You frown. ‘You drink shampoo booze, Carol’.

At that, she pulls the face that scares Badison in the other direction, before turning sharply away from you. ‘It’s to hide it from the fuckin’ guards, smartass. Watch your damn mouth-’

‘Why didn’t you want me humming Maniac?’ you inquire suddenly, your brain working a mile a minute. The thought had suddenly popped into your mind, as you had remember what exactly the song you had been humming was called. Perhaps the word was something Carol had heard before…no, she didn’t seem like someone to take offense at anything.

She stiffens and throws you a sharp glare, her lollipop held in her lithe fingers and her blue eyes narrowed dangerously. For the first time in weeks, you feel as if you have crossed something invisible line. Still, you not do back down. You stare right back at her, your gaze lower than hers due to your height, even whilst sitting down, and your dark eyes unblinking. Slowly, you pop the lollipop from your mouth. Finally, Carol replies stonily, ‘It was Debbie’s song. She’d always play it at her fuckin’ ribbon gymnastics meets’. She pauses. ‘Shittin’ song would drive Barb and I insane’.

Well…fuck. You hadn’t been expecting that. You were, however, expecting the entire lack of remorse in the older woman’s expression as she plops the candy back into her mouth and stares at your, as if waiting for your reply. She looked pleased, you realise, as if making you uncomfortable made her happy.

You could never understand why she had done that to her sister. You could never understand the life Carol had come from when she was young, and you were sure she would never tell you. What you were sure of, though, was that she was not the only one that was capable of fucking someone up, whether they deserved it or not.

The difference was, whilst Little Debbie had not deserved it, the men you had murdered did.

‘Yeah,’ you muse, licking idly at the candy. ‘Ever since I killed those men, the thought of Pepsi just makes me think of slicing off their dicks, you know? It put me right off it, ‘cause they gave me some before I drugged them’.

You know that she realises this is a challenge; a show that you choose to not use your past crime as a power jump. But she needs to know that you can be dangerous too, and when she raises her lollipop to yours in a cheers motion and mutters, ‘I knew I saw somethin’ in you, Jones - you haven’t proven me wrong so far’, you know that, if you try hard enough, you might be able to draw Carol in enough so that you do understand why she had murdered her sister, or what life Carol had come from. If there were reasons at all.

Maybe, somehow, you could make her yours just as she much she believed you to be hers.

‘I won’t,’ you reply quietly. Almost unsure of your words, you add, ‘You can trust me Carol’.

You think maybe she might believe you, but only because she gives you a hard kiss against the mouth fifteen minutes later when you go separate ways.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a quick one with some fluff i guess? kind of? ish? anyway, thank you to everyone for the feedback and the likes and the lovely messages! i think with carol, trust and knowing someone has to be initiated slowly, and that’s what chapters like these are for - so not smut, sorry perverts! ;) oxo

You find yourself in the space that Carol had showed you often. It was private; something which was hard to come by these days. Someone, a D-Block girl, had stumbled upon you once, but had quickly left when you bestowed her with a hard glare and a movement as if to stand.

Other than that, it was quiet. Every so often a dark-skinned woman would come to read for an hour, only to leave you after said hour was up so that you could do your own reading, lean against the wall, and think without having anyone watching.

One time, after a particularly hard visit with your mother (whose operation had not been a success – the cancer had spread and so she would start chemo soon) you had even been able to cry in private. Such a thing was hard to fucking come by in Max, and with Carol having Johnson watch you in the showers now, Carol’s alcove was the only place you had.

In the week you started using the space, you look at the picture of her a lot.

She was so young. Young and pretty; a certain softness around her features despite the hard frown and the lines already appearing on her mouth. You would squint at her face until your eyes would cross, wondering what life had been like for that girl before prison. You wondered about Frieda, and if Carol had truly cared about the woman.

You think of how cold and horrible prison was, as you sit with your book balanced on your cross legs, with your head resting against the wall. There was so little physical contact here, save for the times you had your quick fucks with Carol. How the fuck had she survived so many decades here? The idea of it, of being locked in this same building for so long…the idea made your skin itch.

That’s how she finds you, with your eyes squinted and your thumbnail chewed to shreds in your mouth. You jump when she steps easily around the corner, her hair particularly unkept (she would have a salon date later, you were sure), and her arms hanging loosely at her sides.

The moment you see her, you groan. ‘Oh, fuck,’ you say. ‘I forgot about Bridge’.

Carol snorts, glancing around the area, until her eyes land on you. ‘Yeah, you did,’ she drawls, walking lazily toward you. ‘This where you’ve been hiding all week?’

You shrug. ‘It’s quiet. Sometimes it’s nice to not be watched by Johnson, you know?’ You try hard to not sound sarcastic. You really do. Carol gifts you with a withering look, before sniffing lightly and crossing her arms.

‘Turns out one of my girls was getting some pills in return for staying close to me,’ she picks at her nails, her brow sliding upward as you flop your book onto the floor and stand, a billion questions on your tongue.

What concerns you most is how worried you are. For Carol. ‘Barb?’ you inquire, standing just a foot away from Carol with your eyebrows drawn close. Carol drops her hand and throws you a look that says what do you think? You nod and swallow. ‘Right. Did you take care of her?’

Carol stares at you for a moment, those cold eyes unwavering. ‘She’ll find it mighty hard to swallow without a tongue, to say the least. One of the Golden Girls took the fall for it’. She smirks a little and tilts her head. ‘You worried, Rianne?’

She sounds amused, and you hate it. With a frown, you reply, ‘You worried when you send Johnson to spy on me in the showers?’

At that, she merely shakes her head and rolls her eyes. ‘Watch your fuckin’ mouth. The fuck you doing here, anyway? Your mom sick, or whatever?’

You are, momentarily, fucking puzzled. ‘You…er-’ She was asking you about your mom? ‘I mean, she’s not great, but it’s not…that. I just, er, like it here-’

‘I asked you how your fuckin’ mom is, not what the square root of seven-hundred-and-fifty-six is. Christ’.

You snort at that, to which she considers you with a long look, before sighing. ‘I’m bored as shit, c’mere’. You can only blink for a second before she’s backing you up against the wall with fingernails against your collarbones and her mouth quickly finding yours.

‘I’m on my fucking period,’ you mutter, annoyed and worried she’ll just drop you and walk away to find something else to do. You have no idea how to react when she shrugs, not at all idealistic or interested in being gentle about this (thank God), and replies,

‘No time for that shit, anyway. Now shut the fuck up’.

You probably kiss back a little too enthusiastically, completely drawn into the idea of just…kissing her. She wanted to kiss, to touch, to press you up against the wall with her tall and slim form and her rough hands groping your chest. You whimper when she finds the faded mark of her bite from months ago, and nips at it until she draws blood once again, and you kiss down her neck and leave wet patches behind.

‘Are you gay, Carol?’ you ask the question when she hovers above you, some ten minutes later, with her hand pressed on the wall against your head and her taller body encasing yours. You know the question can earn you a punishment, so you’re not at all surprised when she glares hotly at you, with swollen lips, and asks,

‘Do I look like a fuckin’ carpet muncher to you?’

You shrug, shrinking slightly down the wall in case her wrath hit. ‘I mean, when you’re munching on mine, you do – ow!’ She pulls harshly at your hair, and you flatten your mouth up at her. ‘I like fucking girls who like fucking girls. I like to think that if you wanted a man, you’d let Granbury, or someone, bury their-’

‘I like your fuckin’ pussy, Jones, is that a sufficient shittin’ answer, or are you gonna interrogate me some more? Christ’. She sucks her teeth and you push her glasses back up her nose, to which she frowns at and pulls away from your, her gaze flying to your discarded book on the floor. ‘The fuck you are reading a book on chess for?’

You shrug and step away from the wall, half-blushing at the fact you had pushed up her fucking glasses. ‘I don’t know. I’ve always been pretty shit at it, and there’s not much here to read other than Law books’.

She throws you a funny look, all judgmental and smug. ‘You don’t know how to play chess? You stupid, or something?’

You glare, slightly annoyed, flip your hair, and reply. ‘No. What, were you President of the fucking Chess Club, or something?’ She stares, deadpan and frowning, and you blink. ‘Oh. You were. That’s…’ You struggle to swallow your smile, and watch as her expression settles into one of that cold anger. She takes a step toward you. ‘I’m not laughing at you,’ you insist, holding up your hand. ‘That’s just a quite…it’s kind of sweet, I guess. You were a total nerd, huh?’

She gives you a bordering bewildered look. ‘Call me sweet again, and I’ll break your kneecaps, Rianne’. She adds, with a derisive scoff, ‘Nerd. You sound like fuckin’ Barb the Barbie’.

‘Hey, I’m not judging you. I was in the Book Club. Oh, and the Debate Club-’

‘Of course, you fucking were’.

-

Periods, you decide, are a horrible fucking thing.

There are also made one billion times worse when you’re incarcerated. There is shitty tampons and even shittier sanitary pads, and you cannot even fathom why Max will not let you have the tablets that helped with your God-awful heavy flow.

As you lie on your bed in your room and rub your swollen belly, you come to terms with the fact that you are dying.

Johnson had long ago rolled her eyes at your pathetic form and gone to spend the day hanging around Carol. You, yourself, had so far had Larsen pop her head into your cell to say hello, and Hellman. The CO had inquired why you were lazing about, and had reacted like you told him you had fucking leprosy when you informed him why.

You truly hated men like him.

You curl up on your bed and flick through your worn copy of The Handmaid’s Tale, all the while wincing at the waves of cramps you get. It was times like this you missed your monthly period routine of hot baths, face masks, piles of pain-killers, and lots of Netflix. What you would kill for something sugary, and not Carol’s fucking lollipops.

Chocolate, soda…God, maybe even a burger.

You were sick of The Handmaid’s Tale. You’d read the book back to front far too many times now…Jesus, at this rate, you’d rather that terrible book on the history of chess from yesterday than this. Chess…Carol was President of the Chess Club.

You try very hard not to find that endearing.

You whine and roll onto your front, your boobs hurting and swollen and gross and, God, you well and truly hated being a woman, sometimes. With your face buried into the thin pillow and your lower back hurting a fuck-load, you don’t here the footsteps enter your cell, and only feel the slight dip in the mattress.

You all but jump out of you skin and scramble onto your side, slightly embarrassed to see Carol sitting with her knees spread and her elbow resting on then, but her face turned toward you. She cocks a brow, gives you a once over, and says, ‘Women have been havin’ periods for fuckin’ years, and here you are acting like you are dying’.

You frown at her, watch to see if anyone is lingering near your door (only Johnson’s back), before nudging her lightly with your foot. ‘It fucking hurts, okay? I get ‘em bad’. You curl onto your side, before squinting at her. ‘What are you doing in here, anyway? I’m not exactly in the mood’.

‘Figure if those nosey bitches know not to look to much into my business,’ she shrugs, and you wonder what the fuck this means. Never would she venture into your cell like this. ‘You want your fucking present, or what?’

You curl on your side some more, before resting your chin on your head and squinting at the woman. She looked mildly annoyed, as if she did not want to be doing this at all. You, once again, look to the door and see no sign of anyone, other than Johnson. ‘…Okay?’

She pulls a fucking Vanilla Coke from the waistband of her trousers.

You gape. You honest to God fucking gape at her, your mouth nearly hitting the damn floor as you struggle to think of what to say. Something like that, in Max…it didn’t come for free. Especially from people like Carol. She worked through favours and people owing her – it was the best way to ensure a rise to the top in this place.

Your gaze flicks from her, to the Coke. You sit up a little, your feet knocking against her thigh. ‘What do you want for it?’ You ask, trying your best to sound level.

Carol, you see, gives you a heavy look and titters. With her usual gruffness, she shoves the drink toward you and snaps, ‘I don’t want anything. Now fuckin’ take the drink and be grateful, huh?’ She shoots you a dark look as your scramble to hold the drink. ‘And don’t even think about tellin’ anyone you got that for free, Rianne. That clear?’

You nod, and she snaps at you to stop your fucking smile when you struggle to flatten the curve of your mouth. You glance toward the door, see that Johnson was still blocking it with her large form, and nudge Carol with the tip of your toe and you sit up a little straighter, the bottle of fizzy drink cradled on your lap.

When you pull her in for a kiss, she allows five seconds of your mouth pressing against hers, before she pulls away with a roll of her eyes and snaps, whilst pushing up her glasses, ‘What the fuck are you doing that for?’

You shrug, settling once again a good distance form her. You feel kind of fucking stupid, fully aware that the kiss was different from the rough make-out of yesterday. The kiss was a thanks; something far too kind for the two of you. ‘I’m saying thank you because you did something nice for me’.

She stares, narrows her gaze, and scoffs like you’re the stupidest person in the Universe. ‘Whatever,’ she drawls, standing from your bed. ‘Try not to bleed over your sheets. They’re assholes about washing them’. She gives you one last look, before sniffing and stalking out into the open.

You stare at your bottle after she leaves, and try you’re very best not smile


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so i know i promise dom carol this chapter, but i had some ideas and thought this would go better. so you know what’s coming next chapter ;) a little story building, bc i’m a sucker for porn with a plot. i hope you guys like, and thank you for getting me to over 300 followers on tumblr (caroldenningimagines)! love uuuuuuuuuuuu oxoxo

You are entirely stumped for just a moment, when you see that it is your father standing on the other side of the glass in the Visitors Room.

For just a moment, you’re half-scared. He had never come without the company of your sister or your mother before and, for just a second, you wonder if something horrible had happened to your mom. It is only when you see his clear eyes and calm face, that you banish that thought from your mind.

When you sit down, you see his fingers are wrapped so tightly around the phone that his fingertips are turning white. You study his face as you draw the phone to your own cheek; from his tense jaw to his flaring nostrils.

‘Dad?’ you ask, sliding into the seat with your brow furrowed. Your relationship with your father has never been like the one your shared with your mother and sister; it was always distant, always a mutual love of father and daughter, but nothing that would indicate you could not live without the other. You knew, after seeing his ashen face on That Night, that he did not see what you did as something that could gain redemption.

He sniffs, a distracted hand coming to rub at his nose. He looks tired. ‘Rianne,’ he greets, in that timbre voice. ‘I came to – what is that?’ You blink at the sudden sharpness in his tone, before your fingers fly to the bruising that Carol had left on your collarbone just days before. In that time, since she had given you your fizzy drink, you had hardly seen her, but the bruise had lasted. You tug up your shirt and glare. Your father meets your gaze, a tinge of disgust there. You feel, for a second, dirty. ‘You’re getting into relationships with these women – are you stupid?’

You almost want to laugh. No, you want to tell him, it is not a relationship. You have no idea what the fuck it is, nor do you care to find out, but a relationship it is not. Still, you grind your teeth and throw him a foul look. ‘What did you come here for, dad?’

He is agitated, obviously, and annoyed at you. He never knew of your relationships with women, so you could only imagine what he thought was going on. Some prison bitch, maybe. You wonder if his next words would have come in a far kinder way, had he not seen the bruises and bite marks Carol had left on you. When his words slip from his mouth, you think you feel your heart break a little. ‘Lily is not going to come and see you anymore, Rianne’.

You blink.

You are speechless, you are confused, you are utterly shocked. You fumble for a few seconds, reiterating his words in your head, before you snap, ‘What? What the fuck do you mean?’ Had something happened to her? Had she come to terms with what you had done – your parents had always ensured to try and hide the gory details of your revenge from your little sister, but so many people at school knew-

Your father closes his eyes for just a moment, before looking at you and sighing. ‘You’re not good for her, Rianne. I’ve told her and your mother that you’ve been moved to a Prison down South. I…your mother needs to get better, and Rianne needs to grow up without feeling so damn guilty over what you did-’

You stare at him, not quite comprehending what he was saying. No…your family did not do this. Your family was close, and they loved each other, and why was he talking to you like you were fucking vermin? You knew of so many women in Max who had no visitors, and you were not one of those people. You couldn’t be. You would…he couldn’t do this.

You shake your head. ‘Dad…no-’

‘We’ve moved, Rianne. Last week – it’s why we haven’t been to visit’. He sniffs again, and his eyes blink rapidly as if he is trying to stop himself from crying. ‘A couple of miles into the countryside. Lily needs a new start-’

‘Dad…You can’t do this. You can’t fucking do this-’ You are heartbroken; so utterly betrayed and confused. What right did he have to do this – how could he do this to you? He knew why you had done what you had done – it was…you had to hurt them like that. To show them. ‘Mom and Lily would never let you-’

He stares at you, something like a sorry in his eyes. ‘I’ll them, eventually,’ he eases out, his voice cracking. ‘Right now…right now I don’t think it’s a good idea for them to see you. I’ll tell them you aren’t allowed phone calls at the new facility. I-’ He swallows and inches slightly, as if he wants to press his fingers against the glass, but decides against it. His eyelids flutter. ‘I’m sorry, Rianne. I just…I can’t understand how you did what you did to those men-’

Your heart is squeezing inside of your chest, and your fingers are shaking like they are being pulled by string. ‘Because they raped Lily,’ you grind out, a fury and anger curling inside of you like hot lava. ‘I am your daughter, you can’t leave me. You can’t take mom and Lily away from me, dad!’

You see Hellman shift in the corner of your eye, and your dad’s eyes twitch toward him. He looks back at you, and you see the resignation in his gaze. He moves to stand. ‘I love you, Rianne. I really do,’ he tells you.

‘No!’ You are not upset, you realise. You are angry at the injustice, at the betrayal and the lie. Your hand slams against the glass as he moves, and your chair scraped beneath you. You feel your voice scratching from your throat as you try as hard as you can to not cry. ‘NO!’

And just like that, he hangs the phone up, gives you one last look, before turning on his heel and marching from the room, from the Prison, and from your life. You stutter out a breath, confused and lightheaded and, God, is that Hellman dragging you from the room? Your body doesn’t want to work. You think you snap at everyone to stop staring, but…you can’t think beyond the aching in your chest and the rage building inside of you.

He pushes you to the outside corridor, a stern glare on his face, and you know the only reason he isn’t giving you a shot is because he’s one of the guards Carol has under her thumb. Carol. Fucking Carol. Maybe if dad hadn’t seen the bitemark…maybe he would-

You draw in a deep breath and shake your head, your hands finding the wall as you lean heavily forward, away from the prying eyes of the visitor’s room. No. He had made is decision. He wanted you out of the family; you, you toxic little thing who was slowly ruining your little sister from guilt.

And mom…she was sick enough, without the stress of you making her sicker.

You straighten up and sniff heavily and rub at your watering eyes. You stare at the wall for maybe ten seconds, trying your hardest to push down the horrible panic inside of you. No one could see you weak. It was a fucking red flag in a place like this.

So, with your shoulders straight and your chin up, you walk forward.

You try and not care, like Carol.

-

Carol is distant.

You don’t know why, and part of you doesn’t know whether to care. You are spending far too much time trying to forget the conversation you’d had with your father three days ago (and a call to your old home phone number received a woman telling you the number no longer existed), which in turn only made you think about it more.

She hasn’t spoken to you since the Vanilla Coke, and you wonder if it is because you kissed her with more softness than usual. Maybe, you think, she thought this to be you getting to attached to her? Well, fuck her. You didn’t need anyone. Your family didn’t need you.

Maybe you were suited to carrying out your sentence alone.

You drag yourself around C-Block, never leaving and never bothering with going to the Yard. You don’t go to the Bridge sessions you are invited to, the ones twice a week, and instead sit purposely in your cell across from Carol’s table.

You are furious when she does not look up to seek you out.

You try not to care. You try not to care about a lot of things.

Johnson talks to you much the same, so at least you know you haven’t fucked up somehow and have a shiv coming your way. She talks about how fucking cold it is, whilst once inquiring why you were in such a shitty mood. You tell her to fuck off, to which she shrugs with a, ‘Fair enough, Curly Wurly’.

It is a week since your talk with your father that you snap.

You had felt the rage curling inside of you for days and days, and you had found yourself often seeking solace in the place Carol had shown you. You ready shitty, boring books and try and throw yourself into a mind-numbing state of forgetting everything that was happening around you. Sometimes, you hated yourself for wishing she would show herself with the usual curl of her lip and the coldness of her eyes.

You think she is finally bored of you. Johnson still delivers a lollipop to your pillow every evening, somehow without you seeing, but you cannot help but consider that Carol is tired of you. Another way in which you are cast aside.

The anger boils, and you want to hurt someone. You want to punch and kick and scream, and it is like when you found out that your mom had cancer, only so much worse. It is like the glint of adrenaline and malice inside of you the moment the burlier of the two men had opened their flat door and welcomed you inside.

Sometimes you think there is something wrong with you. Sometimes you think you are being dramatic. You are not bad; you love, and you see beauty in the world…you don’t like hurting people. Sometimes…sometimes you just got so angry.

Sometimes you liked seeing those who deserved it bleed.

The day that you snap, you wake up with an ache in your back and a chill from the cold, and you know it is going to be a bad day. The cold silence from Carol remains, even when you pass her table in the area outside the cells. You get a shot for forgetting to wear your name badge, and you grumble as you push yourself into the Yard some hours later.

Maybe some fresh air would do you some good. Maybe a break from your own solitary would clear your head.

You push yourself against the wall and think of Lily. Somehow…you think maybe this will be good for her. It made you sick, how guilty you felt knowing how much she had suffered from your actions. You know kids at school would shout at her, calling you a murderer. She could be normal, without you there. She could be happy.

Dad…Dad had no right to take mom away from you, though. What if she died? What if she got so sick, and you never even knew-

You see her, then.

The Yard, you learnt quickly, is a stupid fucking place to shiv someone. It’s too out in the open with too many eyes to see, and there’s always a bunch of CO’s scattered about watching. When there was a hit in the Yard, it was because it was someone knowing they would have to take the fall. Meaning, it was on Barb or Carol’s orders, because if not the CO’s would always be looking their way when someone got hurt.

You don’t know her name, but you know from her colours that she is D-Block. Barb, from what you had heard, didn’t venture into the Yard. Not when Carol was there. Not when there was so much that could go wrong. All you know is, you see her move. She is sad and skinny, with a frizz of red hair and teeth the colour of yellow paint.

She moves so slowly, you wonder why you’re looking at all. It is only when you see that she is venturing into the sea of C-Blockers that you move a little away from the wall, your alertness going up.

It takes you exactly ten seconds to realise that she is headed for Carol’s little group; the older women who she trusted, and not the younger, far more unhinged ones.

It takes you two seconds to realise that you’re fucking worried.

It takes you one second to trip forward, the rubber of your soles catching on the concrete, and push past two particularly rough looking C-Blockers. They move aside, and it all seems very much like a blur as you catch up with the fucking meth-head, just before she reaches Carol, the glint of a shiv in her hand, and push her roughly to the ground. You stare for a moment as she scrambles, before you sneer and you snap.

You feel fucking elated when the bottom of your shoe lands on her stomach, and you feel something crack.

There are shouts, you realise, and you dart forward as the woman rolls onto her side to kick the shiv toward you, and it drags with you under your shoe. You couldn’t risk anyone from D-Block getting it, not as the two blocks huddle forward, insults on their tongues. You breathe heavily, adrenaline and something else whirling inside of you, until a CO drags you back and tells you to lift your foot, and you look up to see Carol staring at you.

With something like pleasure on her face, she smirks.

-

You walk into C-Block with a bruised right cheekbone the next morning.

A gift from Hellman, when you had spat in his face and shouted that there was no reason you should be going to fucking Ad-Seg for the night, just because you had been doing his fucking job. The woman, whose name you learned was Bennet, would be there indefinitely. She had attacked, you had prevented. 

You notice the quiet that takes over some of the table as you are let back into the block by the ginger guard who annoyed the shit out of you with her fucking life lessons. Your fists clench at your sides, and you try very hard to stare dead ahead as certain tables turn your way, a slight lull coming to the conversation.

You’re not at all surprised when you cross her table, and hear her say your name in that calm, authoritative voice of hers. ‘Jones,’ she calls, because never in a million years would she call you Rianne in front of others.

As you turn to her, you want to cock a brow as if to say oh, you’re talking to me now, are you? You think she sees your look, though, because she smirks without really smirking and shifts a little in her seat. Around her, the women go about their business, knowing not to stare. ‘Carol,’ you say in return.

They’re not playing Bridge. They’re just sitting – Carol and her C-Block girls, all sitting along one of the longer tables. This is her crew, and although you’ve joined her during Bridge, you’ve never joined her when she’s among all of them.

She tilts her head, and she knows you see it. Of course, you’d seen the spare seat next to her, just on her right, the moment you had turned around. You wonder who she had tossed aside to make room on her already crowded table. ‘Sit,’ she orders, and you do.

Badison sits opposite you, and merely cocks a teasing brow when you look stonily at her. Carol cuts across before she can say anything, dragging the attention of all the women to her. With fingertips pressed against the table, she speaks, all rough anger and venom. ‘Whilst you useless fuckin’ lot were standing pretty in the yard, fuckin’ Barb almost got a hit on me. Y’know who saw it? Jones here. She wasn’t even on fuckin’ watch yesterday – and that’s why Knight ain’t gonna be joining us from now on’.

Oh. So that’s who had been banished. You shift and stare at the table top, not quite knowing what to do, but knowing that a lack of emotion would be the best bet. This was Carol’s way of saying thank you, you suppose. If you could roll your eyes, you would. You had insisted to the woman that she could trust you.

Still, even you were surprised at the lengths you had gone to. Not even you thought you cared that much. It almost scared you.

‘Barb ain’t gonna quit, and neither am I. If you shit for brains aren’t gonna open your fuckin’ eyes once in a while, Douche-Block is gonna take us down. Is that what you want?’ There is angered round of negatives, and you keep your mouth shut. ‘Good,’ Carol bites out.

As you look up, you receive the somewhat disdainful looks from Carol’s girls. You wonder what they would think if you knew the full extent of what you had done for Carol, beyond making sure she didn’t get a rusty fucking shiv in the back. What would they do if they knew that you had made Carol come with her hands in your hair and her breathless coo of your first name filling the air between you?

What would they do if they knew that she gifted you with candy every day, that she inquired, somewhat disinterestedly, about the health of you mother, and that she had kissed you? Would they want to hurt you, knowing that you’d had their fearless leader in positions none of them could ever dream of?

The conversation scatters, and you see Johnson sitting on the other side of Carol as the two talk lowly to each other. Across from you, Badison shuffles through a deck of cards distractedly, and you wonder if she is trying to teach herself Bridge. You’re going to pull a folded-up book of shitty poetry from your trousers when you feel it; the steel handgrip on your upper thigh.

Considering how short and finely cut her nails are, you wince and falter at the pain of it.

It is only when you she turns to you, ever so briefly, that you realise that Carol is not pleased with you at all. You falter as you catch her gaze, and one thing is clear. She’s pissed. Her nostrils flare and you watch her jaw harden, and as you breathe in a heavy breath her hand squeezes so hard that you swear feel the muscle bruise.

Her gaze flicks toward your cheek for a split second, before she snatches her hand away and settles it on the table, as if nothing had happened at all.

But you had seen the look in her eye, even as you drag your book onto the table and try to look as if you feel completely at home amongst Carol and her girls; as you try to calm the beating of your heart. Because, really, this was it now. You were not just the girl who played Bridge with Carol, nor the new cookie from so long ago that Carol had told others to leave alone. You were in her Circle.

And even though you had seen a threat in Carol’s gaze, you could not find it in your to be scared, or worried, or even concerned.

Because amongst that threat, there had been a promise that you would see her later.

And you hate yourself for being excited.


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> okay so i know i promised smut and that this is super short, but i wanted to get something out today as i’m now busy tonight and i’ve been at the gym all day (don’t ask, it was awful). i hope you guys like, new stuff coming tomorrow! sorry guys, ly all oxoxo

You don’t sleep.

You wait.

You’re not sure what you’re waiting for. She could come for you in a few days’ time, with a swift grab to your arm as she drags you into a closet, or an order to bring you to the salon, or even if she sneaks into your bunk again. Either way, you’re not sure what she will bring with her. 

Pain or pleasure, you’re not sure, either way the look on her face had promised something. Mine. That’s what she called you. A fucking possession, and you had endangered yourself. You know in some fucked up world it was her caring what happened to you, but in reality, there was no caring involved. All she cared about was if her thing got damaged. You were nothing but a thing to be cast aside.

You shuffle against the wall as you sit on your bunk, your papery covers pulled around your legs and Johnson’s sharp snores above you filling the small cell. She had bid you good night with a grunt and a hand to your shoulder, but with no indication that she knew if Carol would be using her power to get Hellman to let her into the cell.

Perhaps her normality was a good sign.

You sit there for hours, your eyes hurting from reading the small words of your poetry book for so long, and your mind whizzing about thoughts of your family. You wondered, really, how long it would be until your saw them again. How long, you thought, would your dad keep up the charade of you being too far away to visit?

You feel sick with anger.

The door cracks open, then, so quiet that you hardly hear it. Johnson’s snores rattle for a moment, as if disturbed, but resume themselves when the door stays open just a crack and an agitated voice whispers, ‘Get the fuck out of there, Jones. Pronto’.

Here we go.

You climb from the bed, ensuring that it does not squeak, and slip on your shoes as fast as you can. The moment you reach the door, Hellman pushes it open enough for you to slip past, and you grimace at the way that he does not move to make room for you. His broad chest, all hard muscle that makes you worry, presses against your front as he smirks down at you.

You swallow, suddenly wondering if you should have come to him so easily…What if Carol really was bored of you? Why not just come to your cell, as she had done before? You are about to open your mouth and ask Hellman what was happening, but he just shakes his head, narrowed those beady eyes, and juts his head sideways. ‘Shut the fuck up and follow me,’ he mutters. ‘Haven’t gone long until patrol switches’.

You swallow and do as told, your shoes quiet against the floor. He leads you out of the gated area, and past all the closed cells. It’s odd, you think, to see C-Block so bare. It makes you think of how fucking grey and dark looking this place really is, as you skim your gaze over the chipped walls, shitty floors and marks left from generations of prisoners. You wonder how so many had made this place a home for so long without going mad. You wonder if you will go mad, in time.

You realise he is taking you to the library.

‘Stupid as shit doing what you did earlier, with Bennet,’ Hellman says idly, as you walk down the final corridor. You look sideways at him, all bored expression and slowly cocking eyebrow. It was best, with Hellman, to keep up the pretence of being a shit-talking prisoner. Best to not let him know you were smart. ‘D-Block is going to know you’re one to watch out for, Jones. Denning’s pussy really that good-?’

‘Shut up,’ you snap, without really thinking at all. He stops, a sudden towering, tall figure above you, and not for the first time you fear what these guards are capable of. He turns to you, burning black eyes and hand grabbing your arm roughly.

‘Watch your damn tongue, inmate,’ he growls, before letting go of you roughly and pushing you forward. You do as told, not keen on getting a swift smack to the back of your thigh with his baton. You’d had it before, and it sucked. ‘Denning is as fucked up as they come. Better stay in her good graces, if I were you. Go on in. Tell her you’ve got four fucking hours, and that’s it’. You blink, not quite understanding as he unlocks the gate to the library and pushes you. ‘Fuck – you stupid, or something? I’ll bang three times when times up, Jones. Get to it, and don’t make a God damn mess’.

You throw him a foul look, before following his orders and stepping into the familiar library. He locks the door behind you, a smirk on his features when you turn to look over your shoulder. Not for the first time, you worry if this is a trap. What if Badison was waiting on the other side of these shelves, shiv in hand and smirk on her face?

As Hellman’s footsteps echo away, yours move forward to Carol’s space.

When you see her, your heart stutters. Part of you wants so desperately for it to be from fear, but you know it’s not. 

She is standing with her back flat against the wall, her ankles crossed, and her eyes fixed on her nails as she picks at them. You stop at the end of the shelf, you heart in your throat and your eyes trained carefully on the older woman. Her glasses glint in the light when she looks up, something akin to interest on her features.

You stand there, useless and not sure what to say, as she stands away from the wall. There is a moments silence before she speaks, and you know it’s to make you uncomfortable. ‘You made a big fuckin’ show yesterday,’ she says, finally. She has that tone in her voice that is the calm before the storm; a calmness that is so entirely fake that you know with a certainty that you have fucked up. ‘A big God damn show, Rianne’.

Your jaw clicks and you straighten up, not moving as she swaggers to stand just a few feet from you. You keep her level gaze. ‘You’re welcome,’ you tell her flatly.

She moves, her face collapsing from the stoic mask and instead morphing into the sneer and the narrowed eyes. It is probably not great, you think, that you are becoming so used to the feel of her fingers wrapping around your throat, as she turns to push you up against the wall to your left. You walk with her, and you realise such an action has become less of her attacking you, and more like a dance between the both of you. She presses flat against you, using every muscle she must to keep you in place, because even Carol is aware that you have started to fight back.

‘You realise what you’ve done, you damn moron?’ she sneers, nose pressed against yours and glasses knocking against your face. You scramble for her hand, your nails picking against her skin as your claw her away. ‘Huh?’

You try to kick at her calves, but her knees lock you in place. ‘What?’ you choke, instead holding her wrist to try and loosen her grasp on you. ‘Now everyone’s going to know I give a shit if you live or die? They’re going to somehow find out that the great Carol Denning who likes big ol’ men like Burt fucking Reynolds…hell, she likes to get fucked knuckle deep by Rianne Jones, is that-’

She slams you harder against the wall, and you yelp quietly as the back of your head hits the concrete. You do notice, though, that her fingers slacken somewhat, though still hold you tightly in place. ‘Jesus,’ she seethes, looking you up and down in disappointment. ‘I thought you were smart, shit for brains. The fuck you think anyone will do if they know – say shit about me? I’ll have them fucking killed’. She spits the word, and you breathe heavily against her as she looks back to you, her blue gaze boring into yours. ‘What the fuck do you think Barb will do when she catches wind that someone other than my usual girls stopped a damn assassination on me, huh? The two of us, we got spies everywhere’.

You stare up at her, the realisation of what she was saying too unbelievable for you to voice out loud. This wasn’t about her, it was about you. But…that would mean- ‘That’s why you invited me to the table,’ you murmur, a heat coming to your cheeks. ‘So, it looks like I’m part of your inner-circle, I-’

She continues to look at you with disdain, her fingers still holding you in place. There was something else in her gaze, though. Something in the way that she clenches her jaw every so often, and twitches her eyes to the side as she speaks. ‘If Barb fucks with the girls I get to be in my good fuckin’ graces – the girls who want authority and my shittin’ blessing, what the fuck do you think she’ll do to someone who gives a shit if I live or die?’ She imitates your earlier words, except her voice does not sound mocking at all.

You don’t know what to say. ‘And that,’ you say slowly, worried that you will step over some invisible line. ‘That would bother you?’

She sneers, apparently annoyed by the question. ‘Something like that, Rianne’.

You nod, her fingers still loose around your throat, as if you are trying to understand the situation. You understand, at least, the way Carol and Barb function some more. It was all petty hits and hurting each other; like normal siblings on fucking steroids. You swallow, your fingers once again curling about her wrist. Her gaze flicks down in confusion, and her fingers contract just a little against your skin. You ignore it. ‘No one was moving,’ you tell her. ‘I had to’.

She looks back up at you, her right eye twitching and her mouth tight. ‘And what the fuck do you want for it? You’re already on my fuckin’ table – that’ll give you enough rep for the others to not fuck with you. I’m not doing-’

You frown up at her. Sometimes, when she said things like that, you wondered even more how fucked up she really was. You wonder if prison had turned her into her such a cold person who expected nothing but favours for other favours, or if she had always been this way. ‘I don’t want anything, you idiot,’ you snap, glaring up at her. Her brow furrows, and her nostrils flare. ‘I just didn’t want you to get hurt, Carol. Jesus fucking Christ-’

You’re not expecting her mouth on yours, but you welcome the feel of it regardless.

There is something different about this kiss, you think. She does not tug at your hair or bite you. Instead, she curls her fingers around the side of your neck and kisses you with vigour that you were used to, but with a slowness that could almost be considered a fucking caress. She kisses hard, but slow, as if she wants to breathe in every inch of you and never exhale. Your heart stutters and your legs wobble, before you move against her. You give her what she wants, perhaps understanding for the first time that maybe you were not something she merely wanted to own.

Perhaps you could show Carol that giving a shit about someone, to a certain degree, was not such a fucking abhorrent thing.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i think this might be the longest one yet? anyway, i hope the smut was worth the wait! i’m loving the slow burn and writing Carol, and i feel dirty after writing this one lmao. ly guys lots thank u for being amazing oxoxo

Hades stole Persephone.

Perhaps it is the fact that there was a poem in the book you were currently reading about the two, and that is the reason that you cannot help but think of this Greek story as you are pushed roughly against the shelves, only to have two thick texts thud onto the floor next to your feet with a puff of dust.

Carol tastes like toothpaste and smells like cigarettes. You wonder where she got one from.

She is all tongue and teeth, a clashing of the two as you wrap into one another, and your heart thuds with anticipation inside you. Even as she pushes and bites at you, you feel as if you have a certain degree of power at that moment. Carol gave a shit if you lived or died. It was a mystery, a fucking enigma, as to why she did, but you understand with a shining clarity that you feel the same about her.

It’s dangerous, you know. She is dangerous.

She pushes your feet apart with her own, her leg sliding between yours and her long hair tickling your neck. She is everywhere, both a disease and a cure etching itself into your being. You feel breathless and overwhelmed with the feel of her; you feel as if one wrong move might send her sneering away from you with mussed hair and red cheeks.

You test this theory, knowing that she had ensured that Hellman would give you both a few hours alone. Your fingers nag at the hem of her dark blue overshirt, and you pull away only slightly to share the hot air between you with her, before you begin tugging up at the offending piece of clothing. You want to see her like you never have before, whilst you can…you want to see all of her.

She stiffens and pulls away, and you see just a glint of piercing eyes behind large glasses, before she is muttering a rough, ‘You first, Rianne’, as she leans in to graze her teeth against your neck and her fingers go about yanking both of your shirts up your torso with far more vigour than you had with her. She is never gentle. She’s like a child exploring something new, all jutting elbows and hard fingertips.

She was in charge. That much was clear.

The cold hits your bare stomach, before it is quickly replaced by the feel of Carol’s fingers pinching your waist and dragging you against her clothed form. You shiver, and you’re not sure whether its from the cold or the fact that her fingers are spidering over every part of your exposed skin, nails dragging and chest pressing close to yours.

‘Barb’s never gonna fuckin’ touch you,’ she bites out aggressively, lips and teeth dragging along your jawline as you lean back, the back of your head hitting the shelf, and her fingers make quick work of undoing the strings of your trousers. Your stomach twists. You had tried to do the same to her, but she had slapped your hands away with a hiss and a sharp look. ‘You’re mine. But you know that, don’t you?’

You’re not sure if you breathe a frantic yes or no, but she chuckles mockingly against you anyway. She laughs like you’re the most amusing thing to her; like she’s playing you like a fucking fiddle and you’re replying exactly how she planned you to. She moves too hard against you then, and you yelp when a sharp corner of the shelf digs into your back.

It is then that you decide that the tables should turn.

You push back, your feet tripping with hers as you kick off you own shoes and trousers, standing before her in white socks and matching bra and underwear. You feel crazed with the feel of her; with the idea that you had Carol fucking Denning at your fingertips. She huffs and snaps at you with a yank of your hair when you push her against the wall, but you only shove your hands underneath her shirts and begin dragging them up in reply. She lets you.

You want to taste her. You want to drink her in.

You don’t ask for permission as you drop to your knees, beside your clothes and her crinkled shirts, and begin tugging down her trousers. She breathes heavily above you, and the fact that she does not yank your hair in warning at your sudden movements makes you realise how much things have really changed over the months.

She lets you touch her so much more, now. Often without asking first.

You use the fact that you can openly look at her to your advantage, from the pale skin of her flat stomach, to the slight curve of her slim thighs as you drag the trousers down her form. She is all pale skin and beauty marks, and as your knees dig into the shitty, rough carpet, you mutter, ‘You’re beautiful’, without really thinking; you are so caught up in the haze of heat and wanting to eat her out until she is whispering your name like she had done only a few times before.

Her right hand, which is clawed in your hair and guiding you, digs painfully into your skull at your words. You wince, but don’t look up. You don’t want to her to get skittish and angry and push you away, and you almost don’t want to see the look on her face. Instead, you do something you haven’t done before.

As you drag down her underwear with your hooked fingers, you kiss your way from her mid-thigh to her centre. She tastes clean and smells like coconut. You wonder if it’s her shower gel.

It takes minutes for her to begin her muttering profanities, and you could almost laugh at the fact that the stoic and icy Carol Denning was a fucking dirty talker in the sack. She mutters foul things, proclaiming acts that she wants to do to you, and things that you will do for her. ‘You’re my good fuckin’ girl, huh?’ she mutters as you suck neatly, and she twists your hair around her fingers. You grab her thigh to steady yourself, and she hisses above you. ‘Mine’.

You know when she is about to come. It’s always the same. Her fingers begin bruising and her breathing picks up amongst her swears and sharp words. She is fire when you fuck her, opposed to the ice she lived as daily. You pull away from her, your mouth wet and your gaze heavy as you finally look up at her. The sight of Carol, with her glasses slipping down her nose, her eyes blown black, her hair fluffed around her shoulders, and her cheeks a pink…you nearly flood your basement then and there.

She glares down at you after a few seconds, her fingers dragging you up with a jolt. ‘The fuck you think you’re doing?’ she rasps, voice low and breathless and, God, if Hades stole Persephone by cracking open the Earth and taking her to the Underworld, you can only wholeheartedly agree with the fact that you were walking freely into Carol Denning’s own Hell.

You give her a half grin, and reply, ‘I’m starting to feel a little bit neglected’.

She sneers at you, her lip curling and her chest flushing, before she drags you to stand by your hair and twists, so that you are the one with your back to the wall. There is such a juxtaposition, you realise, in the way that you handle her, and she handles you. As she tells you that she’s the one in fucking charge and not you, you can only spread your legs for her as she roughly palms her way into your underwear with crooked fingers, and silently agree.

You loved it. You loved knowing she wanted you…but only time would tell if you could make the same brand on her.

With her fingers inside of you, the itch that had been building for the last near forty-five minutes is found, and you feel like jelly underneath her movements. She jolts into you, her fingers digging in and out as her words bite past her lips and her palm rubs against you. ‘You wanted this, huh? You fucking love being my bitch’. And, fuck, you do. You open your eyes only briefly, with so much effort, to see her flushed face just centimetres from yours, and her free arm blocking you in with her hand pressed against the wall. She traps you in, and you shudder at the fell of her cool skin against yours.

When your eyes meet hers, she leans in to kiss you roughly and you claw desperately at the side of her neck when her fingers curl and your muscles tighten, and fuck, you’re so fucking close-

‘Jesus,’ Carol mutters against your hair. ‘You’re fucking soaking for me, Rianne’. Your mind is a mess of words and fucking hell’s and, fuck, you don’t understand how a woman who had never even touched a pussy before was so good at fucking you. You feel the elastic band begin to snap inside of you, and it is at that moment that she pulls her hand away from you and comes up to roughly palm your breast, her breath on your face when she says, ‘You come when I want you to come’, and you feel as if you want to go fucking mad with how turned on you are.

You glare at her, and she smirks.

You’re not sure how it happens, but in just a few seconds you are both plucking each other’s bras from the other as your mouths bite and linger against each other, your bodies moving as if you are puppets on a string. She fumbles with your bra, and you reach around to help her. She doesn’t say anything, and neither do you.

She is the one who pushes you to the ground, your bare body on the cold floor, and bites your sensitive nipples with something like inexperience in her movements. You watch…you watch with hooded eyes and your elbows supporting you as she lingers between your legs, and Carol Denning is entirely fucking bare before you. She watches your chest rise and fall, her glasses slightly askew, and her fingers run over the dark skin of your breasts as her teeth drag across your nipples.

There is interest in the way she studies you in those seconds. You know that Carol is a watcher. In the early days of hearing who she was, you had looked from the corner of your eye as she had studied the women around her. That was the thing about Carol. She knew everything that was happening in C-Block and around her, and you think that she hates not knowing exactly what to do when she’s with you. You touch her, your own finger pulling her closer and pressing your breasts together as she bites your bottom lip with nothing akin to gentleness.

You somehow feel like this isn’t just fucking anymore.

You want to touch her, but it’s such a fucking step from your usual quick fingering and eating out sessions to have her naked above you, with pale skin dotted with years of scars, beauty marks and the odd stretch mark scattered over her thigh and breast. She looks more human, despite the complete inhuman aura coming from her as she holds you in place, and it terrifies you. You were good at sex, but in that moment you’re nervous.

She slips her fingers back inside of you with her eyes, just a sliver of blue there, locked on yours and her face a mask of smugness. You jolt and shudder, her fingers so painfully slow that you want to grab hold of her hand and make her go faster. Perhaps this is her form of punishment for stopping Bennet, and for pulling your mouth away from her core.

When you feel her wetness against your thigh, you reach for her, your gaze glued on hers.

It is minutes or hours later than she crooks her fingers and her palm presses against your curls, still so painfully fucking slow, that she mutters, ‘Don’t you ever shave that damn bush, you got that?’ You whimper, fucking whimper, and she slides against your own fingers that move against her nub. You can only half understand what she is saying. ‘Your fuckin’ pussy is mine – all mine-’

You moan, then, a whine that you normally would not be able to let out were it not for the privacy that the both of you had. Her fingers work slightly fast, now, and you return the favour, your fingers sliding over her wetness as you circle hr clit and welcome her between your legs. You are so close; so tightly pressed together that you might become one person. Her nose presses against yours and her knees digs into your sides and you move faster and faster against her, your fingers nearly cramping, and then-

You come together. You thought that shit only happened in fucking pornos. Still, you open your mouth in a silent cry as she swears into your neck, her skin pressed solidly against yours in a way…in a way that you have not felt intimacy in so fucking long. You come hard, your hips thrusting against her own and you feel her spasm against you. She is loud, louder than usual, and she presses her mouth into your wild curls and bites hard on your shoulder to silence herself.

You feel fucking elated at the fact that it was you who drew that sound from her.

There is a second, just a split second, when she pulls her face from your neck and hovers above you, both of you breathless and sweaty and still in the haze of orgasm. She looks at you, and there is no sneer or flinch when you reach up to touch her jaw with more gentleness than you had done before. You stay there for just a few seconds, her fingers slipping out of you and her elbow resting at the side of your head, and you let out just a breath of laughter.

Carol, in return, smirks as you push her glasses back up her nose.

The moment, and you’re not sure whether to think of it as soft, ends quickly. You know it must. She climbs off you and begins tugging on her white over-shirt begore you even have time to sit up, the v of your legs aching somewhat. Once she has slid on her underwear and gone to lean against the wall, her bare legs bent, you are only just tugging on your own shirt.

‘You want a cigarette?’ she inquires, and you look at her sharply, your legs bent awkwardly as you try to pull on your knickers. She quirks an amused brow at you, to which you snort. She already has a rolled-up cigarette in her mouth, and from the elastic of her socks you can see three more sticking out.

You never really smoked, but you don’t want to say no since she had offered. With tired limbs and cold knees against the floor, you crawl to sit beside her and take the cigarette from her hand. She lights a match pulled from her shirt pocket against the wall, and cups her hand once hers is lit to allow you to lean in and light your own.

You eye her, and find that the sight of Carol smoking, her lips curling around the stick and her cheeks hollowing, is one you quite fucking like.

You would laugh, had anyone told you this is where you would end up, just a few months ago. Here you were, sitting with Carol fucking Denning in your shirt and underwear, and her the same, smoking a cigarette after having the sex of your existence. You couldn’t write this shit, really. You blow the smoke out, knowing that you still have nearly two hours until you had go.

It was never like this. You never just sat together afterwards.

You want to fill the silence, because you can feel your nerves coming back, so you blurt out, ‘My dad came yesterday. They moved. He told my mom and sister I was placed at a different facility’. You take another drag of the cigarette, your eyes hard on the shelf in front of you. Carol, in turn, inclines her head slightly to eye you. ‘They’re not going to come and see me anymore. I can’t even fucking call them’. You swallow, a foul expression on your features. ‘He took mom’s mobile number off my fucking call list’.

You crush the cigarette so hard between your fingers that the filter squishes down to a slim line.

Carol is silent for a moment, the only sound her sharp exhale as she shifts her arms to rest over her knees. Before you know it, she is pointing the glowing end of her cigarette at you as you turn, half surprised to see bitterness in her expression. ‘Sounds fuckin’ familiar, Rianne,’ she spits, taking another harsh drag. ‘Barbie got visits from darling mother every fuckin’ week before she croaked. What did I get? Not even a shittin’ Birthday card. Blood ain’t thicker than fuckin’ water. You gotta find your own loyalties elsewhere-’

You think how sad it is, that life had treated her this way. Carol Denning murdered her little sister, but you wonder why. You wonder why it was Barb who got the visits from their mom, and not Carol. You take another drag. ‘It’s like I’m a fuckin disease and he’s trying to get rid of me before I can spread’. You wrinkle your nose, and Carol looks upon you with her chin held high and the flush of her cheeks fading. ‘I made sure those assholes wouldn’t get a shitty fucking prison sentence – I made sure they hurt before they died. What do I get? I get fucking banished. Mom and Lily don’t even fucking know where I am-’

Carol sniffs, bitter. ‘You did something. Seems to me your dad is a fucking pussy, Ri’.

You falter at the nickname, before stubbing out the cigarette on the floor next to you. ‘He is. Not my mom. She would never let him do this. She-’

You are cut off by Carol roughly grabbing your chin and turning you to her once more. She leans in close, all reptilian movements and slight sneer as she says, ‘Some fuckers don’t understand people like us, Rianne. We’re the doers of the world. The sooner you start learning that people don’t give a shit about anyone else, the better-’

You frown, your hand coming up to grab her wrist and pull her fingers away from you chin. She shuts up and glares, her eyes darting from your fingers to your face. She looks as if she doesn’t know whether to yank them away, or let you keep talking. ‘That’s not true,’ you tell her, knowing that you were crossing a line. ‘I give a shit about my mom and sister, and they give a shit about me. I give a shit about my dad…and I know that he loves me. He just…he just doesn’t understand, and yeah, I’m pissed as shit, but I still love him. And you…I give a shit about you, Carol. I would have let Bennet fucking shank you if not, and not broken her fucking rib-’

You be quiet when she tells you to shut the fuck up, her brow furrowed, and her mouth pressed into a straight line. She is never soft looking, Carol. She is hard like stone, with critical looks and calculating stares. You worry, for just a moment, that she was going to punch you, or tell you to stop being a fucking pussy. Instead, Carol Denning reaches forward, your fingers dropping from her wrist, to touch one of your curls and give you a hard, almost apprehensive look. With a look that tells you she knows exactly what her touch is doing, she moves to skim her fingers over your bruised cheekbone.

Her jaw jumps. ‘You’re gonna be sitting next to me from now on. Like today. Every day. And in the yard. You got that?’ She tilts her head, as if knowing the answer. You wonder what she would do if you told her than no, you did not want to do that. You don’t, of course. You were finding that you wanted to spend time with Carol, beyond the great lay that she was.

Every day. People would see something, then. They would look harder, and see that somehow you had made yourself important to Carol Denning, in a way that only those who aided her did. Except, you weren’t a fucking minion. You didn’t fight, you didn’t deliver hits, you didn’t get drugs in.

You pause, your breath coming fast and your skin burning from her touch, and reply, ‘Yeah, Carol. That’s good with me’.

At that, she smirks like a kid getting a fuck ton of candy, and you wonder just how far into Hell she would drag you.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey, it’s me, your friendly carol obsessed bi girl. this chapter is a little more plot building with some character interaction, because i’m a sucker for plot. i’m trying hard to display carol as slowly interacting with jones in a way that is more natural, but of course not sappy or romantic. it’s carol denning, for fucks sake. she will never be sappy or romantic. there are probably spelling mistakes because i want to get this out whilst i have time, sorry! thank you for being wonderful readers, ly all!

That night (or early morning), you sleep with apprehension in your stomach and the scratchy sheets of C-Block pulled up to your chin. You had a few things that made your bunk slightly more comfortable. You had thick socks from the commissary, an extra pillow that had appeared in your cell two weeks ago, a picture of your family stuck to the furthest end of your bunk, and an array of hygiene products on your shelf.

Johnson, you knew, had far more things in the cell, considering it had been hers for so much longer. She had old magazines stashed away, pictures of who you assumed were her family, a knitted quilt, an array of foot care products for some infection she had, and knitted flower hanging from her shelf.

You wake up with the harsh light of Max in your eyes and the shouts of the CO’s banging open the cell doors. Johnson is already swinging down from her bunk with a huff and a thud by the time you’re stretching. You’re fucking exhausted, having only got a few hours sleep, and want nothing more than to curl against the wall and forget the world.

‘Get the fuck up, Curly Wurly,’ Johnson barks, and you groan and flip her in the bird in reply.

You rub your bruise lightly as you change, minutes later, and be sure to try and cover up any marks that Carol had left the night before. You wonder if she would want you to. The ginger CO whose name you didn’t care to learn welcomes you with a click of her tongue and a, ‘A good nights sleep means a good day, Jones!’ as you practically crawl from your cell, hair a mess and mouth tasting of the off-brand toothpaste.

You want to tell her to fuck off, but figure it isn’t worth getting a shot.

You falter for just a moment when you walk toward Carol’s table for breakfast, before straightening your shoulders and acting as if you weren’t momentarily perplexed to find not only the seat to Caro’s right free, but a tray already laid out for you.

She doesn’t look at you when you sit down, half of her tray already empty and her hands clasped in front of her face as she talks to an older Asian woman, but some young shaven girl across from you nods and says, ‘Alright, Jones?’

You fumble for a split second, your plastic fork in hand and your shoulders hunching from the number of women sitting at the table, before you sniff and nod in a respectful manner. ‘Morning’. It’s fuckin surreal, how people just seemed to know how to act and what Carol wanted, when you were left in with a big old question mark in your head.

Perhaps, though, they knew the drill when a new girl came to the table. Probably.

You look around at the women, all of them talking lowly and nod of them overshadowing Carol’s voice. The woman, who of course sits at the centre of the table and next to you, speaks lowly with the woman, her shoulders moving as if she is laughing. You turn back to your food, tired and lethargic and trying very hard not to taste whatever you are eating, when you see her turn slightly toward you out of the corner of your eye.

You turn to her, still swallowing, when you see her brow cock slowly and her mouth pull into the barely present smirk. You are about to cock a brow at her, but all the air seems to leave your body when she reaches forward to touch your bruised cheekbone, like the night before, and mutters, ‘Hellman got you good, Jones, huh?’

You don’t move for a second, knowing full well that most of the table will have seen Carol fucking Denning touch you like that. You think you might be having a mini cardiac arrest with the flicker of attention from the others, before you quickly reply whilst recovering, ‘Worth it, I guess’.

She smirks, your heart thuds, and as you turn back to your food and watch Carol bark at the girl opposite you to stop fucking staring, you know you are fucked.

-

‘I am fucking exhausted,’ you inform Carol, when she joins your side silently as you walk out into the Yard. Normally, she would be joined by one of her girls. Carol was never alone in the Yard. Today, you guess its you, before you join the group. ‘How are you not as messed up as I am right now? I look like a fucking panda’.

She scoffs. ‘You get used to sleepless nights in this fucking place, Jones. Don’t be such a pussy. Breathe in the fresh air, or what-fucking-ever’.

You snort and throw her a sideways glance, your chin pressed against the collar of your coat and your cheeks flushed from the sudden cold. You wished you had a hat like Carol’s, but you’re had gone missing in your second week here. ‘You sound like the ginger guard’.

Carol sneers. ‘That bitch’.

You stuff your hands into your pockets and shudder. ‘Fucking Christ it’s cold’. You tilt your head into the coat and breathe our hot air, trying hard to gather some semblance of warmth. ‘Oh, so we’re touching each other’s cheeks now?’ You make sure you say it low enough as you filter into Carol’s usual corner, as you wait for Johnson and the others. ‘That’s a thing?’

She side-eyes you, moving so that her back is to the corner. You know it’s a habit she’s picked up from so many years in prison. ‘Just showing them what’s mine, Rianne,’ she murmurs distractedly, eyeing the Yard, and you flush, but not from the cold this time. It was weird, to hear her say such things without the sex to urge her. 

You don’t reply, and instead grit your teeth against the cold and keep an eye out for any D-Blockers looking your way. You know Carol is doing the same. Though she will never admit it, you know that she feels far safer when surrounded by her C-Block girls.

You are snapped out of your thoughts by Carol’s harsh muttering. ‘Jesus fucking Christ will stop your damn teeth from chattering for five fucking seconds. Shit – here’. You watch as she shuffles into the pocket of her oversized coat, before yanking out a grey knit beanie like her own and shoving it into your hands without looking at you. ‘I’ve got two more in my cell, fucking take it, you infant. You never felt the cold before?’ She mutters, shoulders hunched and hands back in her pockets as you cautiously pull the beanie onto your head after a moment of blinking in bemusement at the side of her head.

Your hair frizzes out the side like a fucking cartoon, and with a nasty smirk on her face Carol tells you as much.

When Johnson arrives with two other women, one you recognise to be Rivera, the Asian woman who Carol had been talking to earlier introduces herself in a thick New York accent as Rea. You, in return, nod and introduce yourself as Jones.

‘-He finally told me yesterday in visitation. Had a whole fuckin’ grocery shop, and my stupid husband has run it into the ground. I mean yeah, it was a front, but so what? You can’t trust anyone. The kids aren’t going to have shit now – what ‘bout you, Jones? What did you do on the outside?’ You blink at Rea, not entirely used to any of Carol’s posse other than Johnson acknowledging you.

In all honesty, you had been half-distracted thinking about the night before, and the noises Carol had made with her mouth against your neck. Sometimes, it was so interesting to look at her in places like the Yard, where she was hard as steel and seemed so consistently, mockingly amused by everyone around her. ‘I was training to be a Child Psychologist,’ you answer, reaching up to rub at your ice-cold nose. Rea raises both eyebrows, whilst Carol scoffs.

‘The fuck would you want to do that for?’ Had it been just the two of you, you might have nastily pointed out that had Carol had a Psychologist when she was a child, maybe she would be in an entirely different place than she is now. Instead, you shoot her a sideways look, half a smile on your face, and reply,

‘Adults are far more fucked up than children’.

Johnson snorts ‘Ain’t that the fuckin’ truth. Y’know, earlier, I went past Jenner’s cell and saw her tryin’ to milk a fuckin’ cockroach before Hellman went in on her’. You stare, aghast, and Johnson shakes her head ‘Crazy bitch’.

The conversation twists onto the attack on Carol, and the woman twists her mouth into an unhappy, mirthless smile. ‘Typical fuckin’ Barb – always using her stupid junkies to do her work. Her brains so fucked with all the shit that she takes, she isn’t even a worthy opponent’. Carol shakes her head, and the women nod, as if they are used to this talk. ‘Badison!’ she snaps suddenly, loudly, and you jolt next to her before looking around to where Carol’s angry stare was direction. Badison stood just a few feet away, with a girl with thick eyebrows and another a frizz of hair. Both stop their laughter at Carol’s sharp tone, and Badison looks over her shoulder guiltily. ‘Stop doing that fucking baby voice. I can hear you from here’.

‘Sorry, Carol’.

The whistle is blown, and everyone begins their slow shuffle back into their separate blocks. Unlike usual, there isn’t any scuffles between blocks as beige and blue go their separate ways. Usually, someone would try and get a free kick or punch in. You stand behind Carol and look up at the back of her head, and you wonder how long she would really want you around.

You never imagined her wanting you this close to her, all the time.

You pause down the long corridor back to C-Block, and Carl turns to you with a pissed off expression and a cocked brow. ‘I need to pee,’ you tell her, with an easy shrug. ‘I’ll be there in five’.

She wrinkles her nose, before sending you a quick wink (which of course makes your palms sweat) and barking out something to the waiting Johnson and Rea. You turn and push through the few dawdling inmates, and make your way to the showers, knowing full well that you needed to splash some water on your face to wake you the fuck up.

Although, the cold had done a pretty good job at keeping you alert.

You’re halfway down the empty corridor when you hear quick footsteps behind you, and your heart jumps in your throat. About a billion thoughts go through your mind in just one second as you turn, your fists already curling at whoever was running toward you at full pelt.

You see only a head of bleached hair before you are sent pummelling to the ground by a heavy force, and your head cracks against the grimy floor.

You think it might be minutes later that you come to, your head pounding and the light above you near blinding. You blink hard, aware of voices above you and the fact that you were sitting upright, your back to a wall.

You groan, and a voice says, ‘Huh. I didn’t think she’d be pretty. Hell, I always knew Carol liked the pussy, but the psycho would never admit it, and this one’s got a nice face, doesn’t she?’ You feel something kick your foot, and you move your mouth lazily. You felt sluggish and dizzy, and you think you might have a concussion. ‘You alive there, Jones? Shit, Woods, you knocked her clean out. I-’

There is a noise, you think, as you try hard to focus your eyes and push your palms against the ground to the push yourself upright. Nothing seems to be working, though. You feel like a lump of throbbing shit. It sounds like a door opening. ‘Barb, CO’s coming this way. You got a few minutes’.

Horror inches inside of you, and kick your feet against the floor and try and push yourself further up the wall. Your body, it seems, does not want to obey you, and instead the heels of your shoes squeak uselessly as they slide.

‘Shit!’ You wonder if you heard that right. You open your eyes as wide as they can go and loll your head back, but still only see the horrible blurs of a small room and people around you. ‘Hey there, Curls. You tell Carol that if she tries to fuck with my product again, I’ll do something worse than get one of my girls to shiv her in the Yard. Now she’s got a little girlfriend’. You blink hard, and see a form of a dark-haired woman leaning down to you, her hand clasped in from of her.

You scowl as best you can, and mutter with a slur, ‘Sure thing, Barbie’.

There is a hard slap against your cheek, and a swift kick to your side. You yelp when you fall to your side, half-wondering if her intent was to kill you. No. She wants you to deliver a message to Carol. You’re the message. There is hasty mutterings and the sound of a door opening, and you black out to the feel of three more hard kicks against your side.

You’re sure you feel something crack, as a different, rougher voice mutters before you entirely pass out, ‘That’s for Bennet, bitch’.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the special chapter i promised! i sincerely hope this is okay. i’m a little worried about posting, but fuck it. thank you for getting me to 410 followers on tumblr and ly allll xxx

Carol is pissed of when the girl doesn’t turn up after twenty minutes.

Part of her, a part of her that is annoying as shit and pops up whenever she doesn’t fucking need it, wonders if Rianne had slipped away to find solitude elsewhere. Hell, sometimes Carol wondered if her head of fucking curls had gone to her brain, and the girl had gone back to that Hernandez.

That girl had a mouth too fucking big for her face, that was for sure.

She would carve Rianne’s fucking eyes out if she did that. She was Carol’s. Carol’s knows that she had claimed the girl was hers the moment she had seen her step into C-Block with her arms full of her possessions, and her wide-eyed gaze drawing in Carol in a way that she hated. That damn face didn’t belong here, and Carol wanted to yank the girl to her side to make sure nobody would fuck it up.

Carol was powerful. She had spent years maintaining a certain degree of power in C-Block. She had her girls, and they followed her every word like it was fucking law. She loved it. She was fucking destined for it.

The only one who didn’t seem to bend to her will was Rianne fucking Jones, and Carol doesn’t know why she lets the brat get away with so much.

At that same time, she knows exactly damn why.

Either way, she is pissed. She had welcomed the girl into her inner-circle slowly, half-aware of what showing any kind of favouritism could do to her rep. She needed loyalty, and Rianne had shown that. Carol wasn’t such a fucking ice-woman; she could give rewards when due.

(She will never admit it, not even to herself, but Rianne by her side benefited Carol in many ways, too).

She turns to Johnson, her anger curling and her fingers pressed hard against the table top. The space next to her, the one she had warned no one to ever fucking sit in, was empty. The stupid fucking girl, whose nose had been turning an alarming shade of a red from the cold in a way that drew Carol’s attention far too much, was late.

She had been late a lot of fucking times before, but this time was really pissing Carol the fuck off.

‘Where the shittin’ hell is that brat?’ she hisses, slamming her cards down onto the table. She doesn’t give a shit about Bridge, even though she’s winning as per-fucking-usual. The space next to her in empty, and people will know that Rianne was supposed to be filling it.

Carol did not like to be made a spectacle of.

No one replies. She’s with her usual lot; the older girls who didn’t answer to Badison’s beck and call like the younger, stupider bitches did. Johnson, with her fucking heavy-set face that Carol always kind of liked, even when she was young, morphs into a curious look as she nods over Carol’s shoulder. ‘Dunno, but Baldy wants you’.

Carol turns over her shoulder and tries very fucking hard not to roll her eyes. Hellman, the fucking idiot, thought he was such a damn hard-ass, but Carol had him right under her thumb. He was a typical cliché. A CO with ulterior motives and a thirst for money. If he brought in the goods and did Carol some favours, she did him some in return. Usually involving whatever contacts her girls had on the outside and a private bank account.

It was win fucking win.

He is leaning against the bars, his expression one nonchalance, and he catches Carol’s eye with a slow arch of his thick brow. When he first got here, Carol half-considered the fact that he was fuckable. Now…a part of her, a shadowed part that had always been drawn to heavy curves and soft skin, doesn’t quite think that any picture of some hairy hunk will ever compare to Jones’s face when she comes.

The girl was putty in Carol’s hands, and Carol enjoyed it a fuck-load.

She slinks over to him with her usual slow swagger and years of knowing how to lay-low. She’s sucking on a lollipop, because she wants a fucking cigarette, but they banned those years ago. She’d managed to get five off one of Badison’s girls, of whom Carol didn’t care to know the name of. She had, for just a few seconds whilst Jones had been distractedly chatting shit about her dad, enjoyed how inexperienced the girl was at sucking on the cancer stick.

So, instead of having cigarettes (because she could get them – she could get anything in here, but Carol is aware how fucked she is from years of smoking anyway), she eats sweets. Instead, she’ll get tooth-rot. Who fucking cares when you’re going to die in this shit hole?

His words make her freeze and her eyes jump to him. ‘Your chocolate lady is tucked up tight in a bed in the Infirmary, Denning’. Carol, for just a second in her distracted mind, wishes she could see Rianne’s face at Hellman calling her that. If there was one thing the girl could do, it was throw a dirty look. Hellman’s smirk at Carol’s uncharacteristically shocked look, before tapping the bars and backing away. ‘Looks like it was your sister. ‘Course, there isn’t any proof’.

After a few seconds of blinking in shock at the bald cunt’s head, Carol is fucking furious. She yanks the candy from her mouth and sneers, low, ‘I’ll make sure one-fifty ends up in the account by the end of the week’. You fucking ape He’ll know what she means.

He cocks a brow, licks his lips, before muttering, ‘An hour after doors locked, Denning. Be ready. I’m doin’ enough fucking favours for you’. He turns on his heel. 

Fucking Barbie. Why did that bitch always feel the fucking need to screw with what was rightfully Carol’s? It had always been that way. If Carol had a birthday present that Barb liked, Barb was screaming fucking murder until she got the same. Sometimes, Carol wonders if she should have pushed Barb into that fucking lake, and not Debbie.

Carol is not unaccustomed to rage. In her youth, she had ended up in Ad-Seg more times than she could count for fights with Barb and yanking a clump out of some bitch’s hair. She had trained herself, though. She was ice. She needed to be ice to stay on top.

As she storms into her cell, away from the stupid annoying as shit fucking voices of her girls, she slams her foot against the wall and growls, her fists curling, and her teeth bared and, fuck, Barb would die. One fucking day, Barb would die, and Carol would be the one to slit that fuckers throat.

No one touched Rianne. No one hurt Rianne.

Rianne gave a shit about Carol, in a way that very few people had, even Carol’s worthless, stupid fucking parents. Carol’s trust was a difficult thing to obtain, ever since that cunt Freida, but Rianne had got it.

Carol cared about very few things in this shitty world, and she’d be fucked if Barb was going to fuck with one of them.

-

Carol had learnt how to make time go fast.

She has spent years making minutes, hours and days go quickly by amusing herself with fucking with others, or playing scenarios in her head. It helped her plan things; things that she would later relay to Badison, and her little lap-dog would fuck off to do what Carol needed. Even before Max, a time that seemed like a shitty, distant dream, she had spent her time at High School reading, playing chess, and fucking with Barb.

She truly missed fucking with Barb.

Her roommate, Rea, slinks into the cell with her eyes downcast and movements silent. She was a good bunk-mate. She knew when Carol needed quiet, and she gave it to her. Mostly because she knew what the fucking consequences would be if not. Carol has the bottom bunk, of course, and she doesn’t look away from her book as Rea brushes her teeth and clambers onto her bunk.

Carol’s rage is a quiet thing in recent years. It is cold and terrible, and it twists inside of her as she imagines what to do to those who have wronged her. It is calculating and smart, and she much prefers it to her fiery rages when she was young.

Carol sits there for another hour as the cell door is closed and the CO gives her a once over (she was used to being watched, but she ran this fucking Block), and Carol stares at the pages of her book without really reading. She imagines Barb with blood on her teeth and Carol’s hands around her neck, and then she thinks about the crinkle of Rianne’s mouth and how red her nose had been in the cold.

Carol sneers to herself and slams the book closed, because she was being a fucking pussy like Barbie used to be with her string of idiot guys.

She is a fifty-one-year-old woman who is going to die in this shit-hole; she has far fucking better things to do than remember the image of Rianne kneeling in front of her with red cheeks and dark eyes and whispering, ‘You’re beautiful’. No, she doesn’t think about that, because she is Carol fucking Denning, and giving a shit about people like that was a waste of fucking time. Carol was going to end up in Florida some-fucking-how, and she couldn’t get attached. Caring was a weakness. 

Hate. Hate was what kept her going.

Hellman taps twice on the door some time later, and Carol is already waiting on the other side with her arms crossed and her brow cocked when he opens it. She is used to sneaking out of her cell at night with the help of the idiot. Before him, another idiot had taken his place. 

Carol had power, and power meant controlling the idiots of the world.

She’s been to the infirmary before, so he leads her up until the corridor before it, and says she has ten minutes. The Doctor was on break, and Rianne was the only one in there, anyway. Carol isn’t necessarily surprised at that. She had heard Bennet was taken to Ad-Seg after being discharged. As Carol steps into the room, alert and frowning, she remembers the times she herself had been in here with a broken nose or a cracked knuckle.

Good times.

When she sees Rianne, the cold anger comes back.

The girl is chained to her bed, with the covers drawn high and the lights brighter in here than in the cells. Her cheek is a battered blue, her lip is split, and when Carol looks away from her feet (because, for some reason, she had stood there frozen, scanning Rianne’s whole body), she looks up to find a pair of large brown eyes staring back at her.

‘I’m afraid I’m not in the fucking kind of mood,’ the girl says after a few moments of stony silence, and though Carol is half-amused she wrinkles her nose and starts for the bed. Rianne stares at her in a way that makes Carol’s hair stand on end. She doesn’t watch Carol like so many others, to see if Carol might strike, she watches with…with something Carol isn’t entirely used to.

She doesn’t know if she hates it, or not.

‘I’m going to fucking skin Barb,’ Carol spits, her fingers curling around the railing of Rianne’s bed. The girl continues to look at her, and Carol sneers down at her. ‘That all they did?’ she asks, jutting her chin toward Rianne’s face.

The girl half-shrugs, and then winces, and Carol’s stomach twists in rage. ‘Sprained rib,’ Rianne explains. ‘Could have been far fucking worse. I called her Barbie,’ the girl relays, a tinge of irony and amusement in her voice. Carol never understood that. She never understood the dry humour Rianne could find in every fucking thing. ‘Apparently that was a bad idea’.

Carol might laugh, were she not so pissed. Her eyes widen as she glares back at Rianne’s face, and her fingers tighten on her rail. ‘The bitch was there?!’

Rianne blinks, and looks as if she is really considering lying. ‘…Yeah’.

Carol lets out a string of swear words, some of whom she is pretty sure she makes up on the spot, before sniffing hard and breathing heavily. She feels the rage swirling inside her; that and something else. ‘This is why I didn’t want you alone,’ she hisses, before she can really stop herself. The words had entered her head and come out of her mouth, and it is only then that she considers that, yeah, this is exactly why Rianne needed to be by her side. This was why her intervening in the Yard before her girls could was a bad idea.

She was in danger.

And that…that really fucking bothered Carol.

Rianne blinks at her and her cheeks redden, and Carol feels almost embarrassed. She hated feeling like that. It was weak and disgusting, and not her at all. She waits for Rianne to say something, her own shoulders heaving with angry breaths, and then the girl says, in a quiet voice with her hair curled messily around her face and her eyes tired, ‘Are you going to be okay?’

Carol stares at her. She might roll her eyes and storm off, had Rianne been any other person. Months ago, she might have grabbed the girls chin and cooed at her in a mocking manner. Carol loved fucking with people like that. In that moment, though, she understands the sincerity of Rianne’s face, and it scares her.

It fucking scares the shit out of her, because even black and blue, this fucking idiot was worried about Carol. Carol tells her this, and she makes her voice drip with the usual mocking venom, but even with this, Rianne just scoffs, winces, and replies,

‘Says the woman coming to visit little ol’ me in the Infirmary’.

Carol doesn’t say anything after that. She does, though, do the thing she wants to do before leaving Rianne, and she doesn’t fucking know why she wants to do it. This girl was a virus, and her weird shit was infecting Carol in a way that no one else had. In the beginning, it was Carol seeing her for the first time and realising she kind of wanted to fuck this girl and call her mine…

Now…now she was pressing a fucking kiss the girls waiting mouth, because it is something that she wants to do. It is something that she needs to do, because seeing the girl all crumpled and hurt made Carol wan to spit fire and break some teeth-

But it also makes Carol give a shit about the girl.

Carol considers the fact that if Barb could see her now, the bitch would piss herself with laughter.


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys! i’m not going to be able to update this weekend, as i’m going away, but hopefully this will keep you going for a few days. this is a little brief, but it’s setting up for the end half of this (which is still about ten parts but w/e lmao) ly allll oxo

You understand that prison is like a separate world, even more so as you grimace your way back to C-Block, with Alvarez stoically walking in front of you. Prison is danger and clenched fists and eyes watching you as you walk. It is women testing your strength and attacking for the simple reason that it was orders, and not because they hated anyone.

Prison was for the ruthless, and you had to survive in here. To survive…maybe you had to listen to Carol a little more. The woman had warned you of what would happen; what you intervening with the hit on her would cause. Word of mouth had travelled somehow, and Barb knew. She knew.

And that left you knee deep in shit.

Alvarez mutters to himself as you walk behind him, and you eye him with distaste as he walks. You do not like the man. In all fairness, there was not one Guard in this place who you particularly liked, but Alvarez was…odd. He stared and muttered and wrote things down on his notepad all the time. He freaked the fuck out of you.

You press you fingers softly to your bruised ribs as you both stop before the gate leading to C-Block, and Alvarez turns to side-eye you as he pulls out his jangle of keys. In return, you stare right back at him with what you know is a dirty look, and wince when you frown to hard and your lip stings.

Fuck Barb. Fuck her girls. Fuck them for dragging you into that closet and beating the shit out of you. Fuck Prison for letting them do that. Fuck it all – you couldn’t even walk down the hallway alone, without D-Block dragging you off to send some fucked up message to Carol.

You had never been beaten up before. I suppose that said a lot about your life before this shit-hole.

You walk into C-Block with your shoulders held high and you arm wrapped over your aching ribs. You know that your face is bruised and cut, but you don’t really give a shit. As you stare around the scattering of women, some of whom look your way, you decide that it was best for these bitches to know…to know why you had been attacked.

You were with Carol Denning’s people now.

You note Carol’s table is filled with her usual crowd (and your heart stutters in an entirely embarrassing way when you realise that the seat to her right is free), but you keep going to your cell. You need to lay the fuck down, because your body feels like a peach that had had the shit pummelled out of it. You need water, a book, and a solid surface against your back-

Oh, for fucks sake.

‘Where d’you think you’re going, Jones?’ Hellman inquires, sliding in front of you with that dead-eyed smirk and his large arms crossed over his chest. You weren’t stupid. You understood Hellman saw you, and all the other inmates, as nothing but fucking animals. There was no point in throwing any form of politeness at him, because this brute of a man saw you as only the crime you committed.

You blink at him, deadpan. ‘My cell, sir’, you reply, and you know full well that he senses the sarcasm dripping from your voice. You don’t care – the idiot was doing Carol’s dirty work for him, even going as far as to escort her to the Infirmary to see you in the middle of the night. You had tried not to dwell on that fact, even after she had pressed a kiss to your mouth and left with a curious stare down at you and a clench of her lithe fingers. Your mind hurt from wondering what the woman meant half the time.

Hellman scoffs, before straightening up and scowling at you. ‘Oh, no. You’ve been relocated, Jones. Mommy wants you all to herself’.

You stare at him, utterly bewildered and slightly concerned for this man’s mental health. For just a tiny second in your painkiller addled mind, you think he is calling himself mommy. After a few seconds of not catching on, you say, ‘…What?’

He rolls his eyes and curses to himself, before reaching forward to turn you roughly to the side, which only results in an embarrassing yelp from you. At your sour look, he snatches his arm away and tells a group of inmates who are staring to go back to whatever the fuck they were doing. ‘You’re in a new cell, Jones. Follow me. What the fuck are you doing? Move’.

A new cell? With who? Where would he be taking you for-

Oh.

Oh.

Instead of dragging you to the other end of C-Block like you had thought, Hellman instead pushes you by the small of your back toward the cell directly to the left of yours. A cell, you know, which belonged to Carol Denning and Rea.

You stand there, well aware that Carol would be looking at you with that fucking smirk, and crane around to look at Hellman. ‘This…is my cell now?’ You sound like a fucking invalid but…you can’t quite wrap your head around the fact that this will have been on Carol’s request, right? She…she really wanted you to sleep in the same cell as her.

The idea, whilst flattering, is fucking terrifying.

Hellman grimaces at you, already going to turn around. ‘Jesus Christ, Jones. How stupid are you? Your shit is on the top bunk. I’d sort it the hell out of I were you. Denning doesn’t like mess’. With that, he smirks and turns on his heel, already snapping at an inmate to stop touching another.

When you look over to Carol’s table, you see her staring at you, a lollipop stick protruding from her mouth, and a large smirk already slipping onto her features. Rather than entertain her, you cock a brow and slip into her cell. No-

Your cell.

Yours and Carol’s cell.

You swallow, looking over the coconut shampoos lines up on the shelf, the few books piled on the table, the knitted flowers dotted around, the cosy looking bottom bunk with a throw and an extra pillow…you were in Carol’s cell. You lived with Carol fucking Denning. Your fingers tighten across your waist, and you wince when you press too hard against the bruising-

‘Everything to your likin’, Jones?’

You throw her an amused smile as you look over your shoulder. She’s standing in the entrance to the cell, her arms hanging loosely at her sides and her lollipop sticking from her mouth. She looked much the same as two nights ago, except with far less ruffled hair. You cock a brow. ‘I snore,’ you inform her, backing away from the doorway a little and knowing that she will follow.

She snorts and yanks the candy from her mouth. ‘No, you fuckin’ don’t. I’ve seen you sleep, moron. You forget?’ Of course. She had snuck into your cell once before…the first time she had ever gone down on you. You scoff, but quickly sober up when she inquires, her voice laced with unsureness, ‘So, you like?’ She says it in a way that tries to portray on sarcastic inquisitiveness, as if she does not care at all if you like your new predicament…but you see through it.

And the fact that she is asking, and the fact that your stomach twists upon her inquiry…it makes your heart beat in a way that has nothing to do with sex or fear. You had seen the same reaction from her in the Infirmary, when you had asked if she was going to be safe after your attack. ‘I’m glad I don’t have to give myself fucking back problems by laying on the damn floor every time you eat me out, if that’s what you-’

You shut the fuck up when she marches forward, apparently entirely ignoring you, to press her finger against the stinging cut of your lip, her brow furrowed and her glasses magnifying her hard gaze. When she looks back to you with cold, cold eyes, she mutters, ‘Now I can make sure you’re not getting into any shit-’

caYou kiss her, and when she presses back to you, if only for a few split second, you know how entirely fucked you are.


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a bit of a filler here, but there is smut coming sooooon. i’ve had a lot of requests of what people want to see, so if you have anything else you want in this please message me!
> 
> f l u f f honey. so much fluff.

The cell is locked, as they always are when bedtime came about, but you feel suddenly more exposed to Carol than you ever have done before. She stands in the middle of the cell, her brow cocked and her arms hanging at her side as she presents you with that dry stare. You feel like a fucking animal in a zoo. You feel like she is testing you, somehow.

The rest of the day had been spent sitting beside her whilst she played Bridge and you talking sparingly to some of the girls. All the while, Carol had kept her shoulder pressed solidly with yours, and you wondered how fucking long it would take your ribs to heal, because the sight of her shuffling cards turned you on for some weird fucking reason.

With a small sniff, you start forward and go about walking idly around her in the small space, fully aware that her rigid body turns with you. She is watching you. Staring. With your clothes suddenly feeling too tight, you rub your nose and reach for you toothbrush and toothpaste on your shelf.

You’re halfway through brushing your teeth when you realise she’s still standing in the exact same place, just a foot behind you.

You turn, brow furrowed and slightly annoyed, to bark with a mouthful of toothpaste, ‘You wanna take a fucking picture, Denning?’

She wrinkles her nose, obviously put-off at the sight of you talking like a fucking idiot with toothpaste around your mouth, before replying, ‘Not right fuckin’ now I don’t, no’.

You snort despite yourself and spit in the shitty, practically tin sink, and plop your toothbrush back onto the shelf. Your shelf was much emptier than hers, you note. She had years worth of things collected. She continues to stand in the middle of the cell when you turn back around, her eyes cold and watchful behind her glasses.

It takes you only a second to realise that maybe she’s feeling exposed, too.

She moves suddenly, her sharp sigh and roll of her eyes bringing you back to yourself. With a flick of her long fingers, she orders, ‘Take your shirt off, Rianne’.

You frown. God damn it, if she had brought you here so you could be her live-in sex-slave…not that, normally, you would be complaining, but your ribs hurt like fuck and your lip still stung every time you spoke. ‘As much as watching you come makes my day, I’m not really in the state-’

‘Just fuckin’ do it’.

You pause, considering for the first time the utter privacy the two of you had, before wincing as you slowly lift your shirt from your form. She doesn’t help you. You don’t expect her to. You think you might be entirely unnerved if Carol started doing things like that for you. Once both your under and over-shirt are on the cold cement floor, you stand in front of her in your bra, socks and trousers, your fingers hovering over your bruised ribs.

You tried not to think about how you got them. The idea of what Barb could do to you worried you, and you fucking hated that you could no longer go anywhere alone.

Carol sneers. Her shoulders hunch and her gaze flickers over you. She doesn’t look at you face when she sniffs and takes a deep breath, her jaw jumping and her fingers clenching. ‘Fuckin’ Barb’. You blink, your body tight as you wonder what she’s thinking. You’re about to say something, anything, when she walks forward.

You flinch, and she smirks when she notices.

You are not expecting her fingers to replace yours, and her tall form to loom over you as she brushes light fingertips over your aching ribs. You are not expecting her to look at you, her gaze hard and her thin lips pressed into a line. You are not expecting her to tilt her head and, finally, say, ‘No one’s gonna touch you again. You can fuckin’ believe that’.

You know she can’t know such a thing, but you somehow believe that she believes the promise.

When she starts to look like the anger is taking over, you lean up to press a kiss on her hard mouth, before plopping back down onto the flats of your feet and blinking up at her. She stares at you, and you wonder when she stopped rolling her eyes at your softness. ‘I thought you would have got bored of me by now,’ you mutter, trying your hardest to not sound as if you had genuinely thought about this.

Carol snorts in a mocking way, and you wonder how she got so good at doing that. ‘Very little shit amuses be in this shit-hole anymore, Jones. You better feel fuckin’ honoured. You-’ She cuts herself off, before sucking on her teeth and tilting her head once again. ‘You’re pretty darn hard to get bored of, idiot’.

You are quite sure that the look on your face must be comical, but Carol stays stoic as ever as she moves away from you and goes for her toothbrush, as if she hadn’t said anything at all. You wonder if you should say anything back, but decide against it. It was best to let the moment slide, no matter how much the words had made your heart thump and your palms sweat.

She wouldn’t get bored of you.

She didn’t want to get bored of you.

You’re going about trying (and failing) to climb onto the top bunk with your undershirt back on when she snaps and asks what the fuck you’re doing. You land back on your feet, your body aching and your cheeks warm, as you turn to see her holding her overshirt in one hand and a foul look on her face. ‘Going…to…bed,’ you answer, wondering if there was some weird fucking initiation into her cell. Would you have to sleep on the floor, or some shit?

She stares at you, and you stare right back. You’re not sure how long this goes on for, until you finally blink hard and ask, ‘What the fuck is happening right now?’ Carol sighs a hiss and throws you a look, to which you throw her an even more flabbergasted one back.

It hits you, then.

She wants you in her bed, but she doesn’t want to say it.

Oh.

You cough and lower your arms to your sides, so entirely done with how awkward this whole situation had been so far. ‘Oh. You want me to-?’

She turns her back on you with a, ‘Do whatever the fuck you want, Jones’.

You pause, stare at her as she slips off her boots and yanks her fingers through her hair, before you turn rigidly and stare at Carol’s bed. Finally, you tug back the covers and crawl beneath them, your heart thumping and your face the colour of a fucking lobster.

You were in her bed.

She turns to you when you finally push your back to the wall, after insisting with a mutter that she preferred to be on the edge of the bed. You wonder if it’s because it would be easier for her to make a run for whatever shiv she probably had hiding around her cell. Your cell.

When she climbs into the bed, all long limbs and side looks, she faces you for a good three seconds, before you swallow tightly and go to take off her glasses. She looks odd without them, you decide. Younger and harder at the same time. You lay the tiniest amount of space from her, and you wonder why sharing a bed with someone seems so much more personal than fucking them.

She sighs, snatches the glasses from you, and plops them onto the floor with a small rattle. It was weird, being so close to the terrifying Carol Denning. The murderer and the sociopath and the crazier of the Denning sisters. She lays before you, a guarded expression on her face as she squints back at you and, finally, you throw her a half smile and mutter,

‘You the big spoon or the little spoon, Carol?’

She glares at you for a good ten seconds, her hair a ruffled mess and her mouth twitching, before she snaps, ‘Don’t make me regret this, Rianne’, in a way that is both pissed off and not pissed off at all.

When she turns her back on you, you mull of what to do for a good three minutes, before you finally take the plunge and shuffle and curl your arm around her slim waist. You feel her breathe beneath you, and it takes you a good while to get in a position that doesn’t make your ribs ache.

It is five minutes later than she relaxes under you and curls against your form, and in reply to your quiet, ‘So…little spoon, huh?’, she hises,

‘Shut the fuck up, Rianne’.


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so…next chapter will be worth the wait. i promise! thank you all for the being so insanely amazing, you don’t even know how much i appreciate it. i hope you enjoy!

Three days in, and you are not used to waking up to Carol Denning kicking you awake with a grumble of, ‘Get in your own fuckin’ bunk before the CO’s open the cells’. You don’t mind, really. In those three nights, though you will never voice it to her, you have slept better than you have in your whole time in prison.

Perhaps it’s the fact that another human body is so close to you, or perhaps it is the fact that you are going to sleep knowing that you are safe. You don’t know, either way, in those few seconds you might blearily wake up in the middle of the night, you feel utterly content at the fact that your arm is looped around Carol fucking Denning’s waist.

Like every time you consider the fact that the feelings you have for her might go beyond a crush or wanting to fuck her, you close off your mind and chew on your thumbnail until it bleeds.

Your ribs still ache, but they are solely better due to the painkillers you collect from the resident Doctor every day. The bruising, of which you spy at daily with Carol eyeing you as she readies herself for leaving the cell for a day of being the Big Boss, was starting to yellow. You remember your mom telling you when you were little that this was a good thing. It meant it was healing.

To be honest, sometimes, you barely even noticed the pain.

You wander around C-Block with a new kind of superiority. No one looks at you. No one touches you. At one point, the day before, you had heard a young cookie with scars on her cheeks and a bandage on her nose ask who you were as you had sat down next to the notorious Carol Denning. In reply, the Hispanic woman next to her had muttered, ‘Eyes down, cookie. Jones is Denning’s’.

You had felt Carol stiffen next to you as her she shuffled the cards, and you yourself had felt your cheeks redden and your annoyance flare. You didn’t like people talking about you, but in here it was inevitable.

Somehow, it kind of annoyed you that you were hers, but not in any way would the world see hers as yours. You think about how Carol had reacted to you talking to Hernandez. Would you have reacted the same to someone who’d had their hands shoved down Carol’s pants?

Yeah. Yeah, you really fucking would have.

This thought plays on your mind that morning, day four of sharing a cell with Carol. Everyone was in half good spirits in C-Block; some bitch in D-Block had been hit, but not died. It was a win for Carol. It was a win for the Block. Hellman, who was on patrol in C-Block, seemed particularly agitated at everyone’s high spirits.

You think that’s why he decided to stop you as you left your cell, after leaving Carol’s table for just a moment to grab a packet of lightly salted, cheap-ass crisps. You had discovered just yesterday that, despite the radio silence from your family, your father was still ensuring that you had weekly money going into your account.

He didn’t even know that you had been attacked. How fucked up was that?

Hellman stops you with a sneer and a narrowing of his beady black eyes, and your automatic reaction is to bestow him with a slightly repulsed look. He hadn’t given you any trouble since you had started hanging with Carol and her girls, and especially since he learned of yours and Carol’s odd little relationship. What the fuck could he want?

‘Random search, inmate,’ he had sneered, a knowing little look in his eye as he snatches your crisps from your hand and drops them to the floor. You know people are looking. They always look when a guard does something like this to an inmate. It makes them as fucking angry as the one being treated like shit.

‘What the hell?’ You snap, shoulders hunching. ‘Why?’

‘Because I damn said so. Arms up, Jones’. He leaves you no time, already yanking your arms up by the bicep and pressing those thick, hard fingers into your supper torso. He steps close, like he had done so many times when you first got here, and you can smell his cheap cologne. His fingers are skimming over your rubs when you hiss and stare over his shoulder to a wall, your neck creeping when red, when he mutters, ‘Tell mommy to fuckin’ be careful when she makes a hit like that. I was on patrol – they’re gonna start pointing fingers at CO’s soon, sweetheart’.

You cringe at his breath so close to your ear, and yank yourself away when his hands splay over your thighs and give an entirely unnecessary squeeze. He smirks at you, and you glare right the fuck back. When he leaves, glancing over his shoulder to see if the other CO’s were looking, he pointedly steps on your snack.

When you walk over to Carol’s table, fully aware of her hot glare on your face and her heavily rising and falling chest, your slide into your seat, still hot with embarrassment and anger, and say quietly, ‘He’s pissed about the hit’.

It’s one of her quieter Bridge sessions with only Rea, Rivera and Johnson, and for that you’re thankful. Carol hisses through her teeth and slams the cards onto the table, whilst Johnson mutters, ‘Fuckin’ CO’s are as bad as the shit they lock up in men’s prisons. Hellman’s always grabbin’ the young girl’s asses like a fuckin’ horny teenager-’

‘Asshole forgets who fills his bank account,’ Carol sneers, and you spy sideways to see the cold fury on her face. Teeth clenching, pale-faced, shoulder hunched fury. ‘Forgets I could fuck his shitty little life up-’

Perhaps it is because you share the same cell now, and you are so used to their being unfiltered conversation between the two of you, but without really thinking you peer at her with a furrowed brow and murmur, ‘I’m fine, Carol. I can handle men like him’.

It is such a simple set of words, but without really meaning to you had acknowledged the reason for her anger, though everyone of course knew. You were Carol’s, and nobody touched what was hers. For the first time, this makes you bitter. Hers. Hers. Hers. Were you just a shitty possession? You close your mouth and watch as she turns to you, eyes alert behind large glasses and wonder if you have crossed some kid of line.

After only a few seconds, as the other women stare at their cards in some form of respect for their leader, Carol mutters, ‘Course you fuckin’ can, Rianne’.

She never called you Rianne in front of others.

In return, your mouth twitched as she turns back to her game as if nothing had happened, and you pick slowly at your crumple crisps packet, all the while trying to understand the game of Bridge happening in front of you.

-

You tell her in the cell, your stomach twisting and your back pressed against the wall. Your boots are off and your hair is a mess around your face, and you watch as she sits on the edge of her bed, legs spread, and flips through some shitty magazine.

The door had only just closed.

You tell her in as sure of a voice as you can.

‘I’m not yours’.

She looks up quickly, brow raised, and mouth pressed closed. She looks as if she doesn’t really know what the fuck you are talking about, until she tilts her head and snaps, ‘The fuck you are talking about, Rianne?’

You cock a brow, swallow, and reply, ‘I’m not just some fucking thing you can own. Your Carol fucking Denning and I’m the fuck-toy you chose. Gay for the stay. Denning’s Bitch. You know that’s what people say, right? Whilst I am sure there are plenty of girls of who be overjoyed as being that, I am fucking not-’

She flips the magazine closed and flops into onto the bed with a massive eye-roll and a large sigh. ‘Jesus fuckin’ Christ. The fuck are you listening to what those bitches are saying-?’

You scowl. ‘Because it’s true. And don’t make me out to be some nagging bitch, Carol. It pisses me off. Do you just see me as some prison pussy to call your own, because of your seriously fucked up superiority-’?

She is standing before you can finish the sentence, a curl of her lip and narrowing of her eyes telling you exactly how much your words had pissed her off. ‘You think I’d let fuckin’ anyone into my bed, Jones?’ she hisses, crowding you with a tongue that was still slightly red from her candy. She towers above you, and your stomach stirs when her palms come to land with a slap on the wall either side of you. ‘You want me to be singing you fuckin’ praises and tellin’ you that I like you? Shit won’t change the fact that you. Are. Mine’.

I like you.

You want to laugh at how High School it sounds.

You breathe heavily, staring up at her gaze with a resolute expression and your tongue darting to wet your lips. She watches the action, and your stomach pools with heat. Here it comes…‘If I’m yours,’ you tell her. ‘Then you’re mine’.

She smirks, all arrogance and cockiness and a hint of something else. ‘Whatever helps you sleep at night, Rianne’.

‘I’m gonna make you admit it one day,’ you inform her, and it is perhaps the most obvious way of telling her, for the first time, that you feel of possessive of her as she does of you. Something in her face flickers, before her jaw tightens and she leans in, her nose brushing over yours.

‘First,’ she mutters, her fingers working quickly at tugging up your shirt and undoing the ties of your trousers, one hand still against the wall. You breathe hotly against her, knowing what was coming, knowing that you fucking needed her to touch you. ‘You can say it’.

You snort, but it comes out as a funny little sound, as her fingers slip beneath your trousers. ‘Dream on, Denning’.

She presses against you, pupils blown wide, and hisses, ‘Your mine, Jones. You fuckin’ know it, and so does everyone else’.


End file.
